This blog is devoted to stuff that white people like

#81 Graduate School

Being white means to engage in a day in, day out struggle to prove that you are smarter than other white people. By the time they reach college, most white people are confronted with the fact that they may not be as smart as they imagined.

In coffee shops, bars, and classes white people will engage in conversations about authors and theorists that go nowhere as both parties start rattling off progressively more obscure people until eventually one side recognizes one and claims a victory. By the time they graduate (or a year or two afterwards), white people realize that they will need an edge to succeed in the cut-throat world of modern white society.

That edge is graduate school.

Though professional graduate schools like law and medicine are desirable, the true ivory tower of academia is most coveted as it imparts true, useless knowledge. The best subjects are English, History, Art History, Film, Gender Studies, <insert nation> Studies, Classics, Philosophy, Political Science, <insert European nation> Literature, and the ultimate: Comp Lit. MFA’s are also acceptable.

Returning to school is an opportunity to join an elite group of people who have a passion for learning that is so great they are willing to forgo low five-figure publishing and media jobs to follow their dreams of academic glory.

Being in graduate school satisfies many white requirements for happiness. They can believe they are helping the world, complain that the government/university doesn’t support them enough, claim they are poor, feel as though are getting smarter, act superior to other people, enjoy perpetual three day weekends, and sleep in every day of the week!

After acquiring a Masters Degree that will not increase their salary or hiring desirability, many white people will move on to a PhD program where they will go after their dream of becoming a professor. However, by their second year they usually wake up with a hangover and realize: “I’m going to spend six years in graduate school to make $35,000 and live in the middle of nowhere?”

After this crisis, a white person will follow one of two paths. The first involves dropping out and moving to New York, San Francisco or their original home town where they can resume the job that they left to attend graduate school.

At this point, they can feel superior to graduate school and say things like “A PhD is a testament to perseverance, not intelligence.” They can also impress their friends at parties by referencing Jacques Lacan or Slavoj Žižek in a conversation about American Idol.

The second path involves becoming a professor, moving to a small town and telling everyone how they are awful and uncultured.

It is important to understand that a graduate degree does not make someone smart, so do not feel intimidated. They may have read more, but in no way does that make them smarter, more competent, or more likable than you. The best thing you can do is to act impressed when a white person talks about critical theorists. This helps them reaffirm that what they learned in graduate school was important and that they are smarter than you. This makes white people easier to deal with when you get promoted ahead of them.

1) In coffee shops, bars, and classes white people will *engaging* in conversations about authors and theorists that go nowhere as both parties…

In coffee shops, bars, and classes white people will *engage* in conversations about authors and theorists that go nowhere as both parties…

2) After this crisis, a white person will follow one of two paths. They will either drop out and move to *New York, San Francisco or their original home town* where they can resume the job that they left to attend graduate school.

After this crisis, a white person will follow one of two paths. They will either drop out and move to New York, San Francisco, or their original home town where they can resume the job that they left to attend graduate school.

Today, I witnessed the the most useless debate. It was a duel between two white grad students. The topic centered on procrastination, and more particulary, one student’s mastery of the underlying psychology of proscratination because she participated in a study abroad program .

In the meantime, I was ably putting off my studies in order to find out why Nicole Richie’s People cover outsold Christina Augilera’s Baby cover.

Jesus white people, tell me you engage in this degree of bullshittery only when “others” are in earshot.

Interesting. I know several white people with higher education degrees and such and make less money than me. Never quite understood why they go through such lengths to obtain these pieces of paper and end up in debt and under paid.

Tell me its for the greater good. Tell me you’ll change the world through all this knowledge building.

My pre-professional program (in a legitimate field) got clogged with white erudite girls who would use their master’s degree not to actually get a job and affect some change, but to hold “intelligent” conversations in suburban coffee shops.

True – the white people in my graduate program are all like that. I just cannot compete with the amount of useless knowledge and the “passion” my compatriots have. Lucky for me I’m also doing an MBA. Which if the blog was “what brown (Indian) people like” or “what Chinese people like” an MBA would be in the #10, probably after Medicine and Engineering and would immediately be followed by consulting.

Hahaha this may be the best one yet. I love it. You gotta appreciate the way people act like they’re smarter than physicians and the only reason they didn’t go to medical isn’t that they couldn’t pass Chem 1, but b/c doctors are sell outs to the evil health care system who look down upon herbal medication.

LOL keep up the good work. This blog is priceless. The only one I check everyday.

thisblog is really about white yuppies or aspiring white yuppies, but gosh darn it its hillarious and so on point!…even though im not white went to graduate school and am now pursuing a PhD …um….. and what the heck i check like 30 minutes ago and there was no post. I check now theres a post and like 50 comments alreayd!

thisblog is really about white yuppies or aspiring white yuppies, but gosh darn it its hillarious and so on point!…even though im not white went to graduate school and am now pursuing a PhD …um….. and what the heck i check like 30 minutes ago and there was no post. I check now theres a post and like 50 comments already!

BTW, professors of the arts like Philosophy, English Lit, Womans Studies, etc shouldn’t be referring to themselves as “Doctor . Doctors go to medical school or have a PhD in a science field. In other words, they are smart enough and worked hard enough to earn the title “Doctor.”

I have my MA in Applied Anthropology (I was sad to not see it on the list) and while I think the post is HILARIOUS, I must admit, I do get significantly more money in my field with the degree, actually, I wouldn’t have been hired without it. So sometimes the bulls*** is worth it.

Hmmm…yes, I see many white people sell their souls to be smarter, then gradually die on the inside only to brought back to life in the horrible form of Grad students! However, when the few grad students I know that actually do pursue worthwhile studies (mainly dealing science) have future jobs at big research companies awaiting them….

then there are the white people with an English degree that found nobody wants their heartbreaking haikus written after their breakup with some Asian girl that took a chance on them. These wastes of space find that its better to contribute nothing to society by going back to grad school and continuing their studies in a degree that so far has netted them nothing in the hopes of killing off more time before they go back into the ego-crushing, ultra-demanding, zero BS real world awaiting them.

and oh yeah…i’m white. When are you going to write about Mayo? I hate that shit, but 99% of white people around the world love it…

You forgot to put Anthropology on your list of subjects. It provides white people with many of the things you have already mentioned – the opportunity to study abroad, become multilingual, pretend that they are poor, be the only white person for miles around all while pretending to have somehow connected with ancient wisdom and the “native”.

Being an Anthropology major also gives you bragging rights for being able to put up with things that constitute everday life for the majority of the world’s inhabitants e.g. no electricity, cold showers, disease.

You did an entry about water, specifically bottled water. I wondering if you could do one about expensive juices. I love this blog, I am black myself, but I loooove juices, especially expensive ones. Brands like Boathouse Farms and Pom are great. I love having them sit on my desk because people ask about them often and they taste good. But anyways, I was wondering if this is something white people like too? I mention these types of juices to my black friends and they don’t get it but mention it to white folks at the university I work at and they’ve heard of them.

@ 39 “BTW, professors of the arts like Philosophy, English Lit, Womans Studies, etc shouldn’t be referring to themselves as “Doctor . Doctors go to medical school or have a PhD in a science field. In other words, they are smart enough and worked hard enough to earn the title “Doctor.””

Do you have any idea how much work goes into a dissertation? A PhD is a doctorate, and therefore you get the title “Doctor”, whether it’s in chemistry, physics, English, or *gasp* Gender Studies.

Lawyers recieve a Jurius Doctor degree, so technically they can go by the title “Doctor”, too. Veterinarians also recieve doctorates, as do dentists. Should these people all be stripped of their earned titles because you don’t think they’re in a field that deserves that title?

I guess it depends on the kind of grad program. I don’t know who really has the time for weekends, let alone three day ones, in PhD programs. But totally agree on the posturing! I’ve heard folks bring in Deleuze and Lacan to discuss shows on HBO (which they do watch! but sneer at!) and go on about how such-and-such show is all about white elite privilege and doesn’t show anyone who’s black – look around the room they’re speaking to and it’s all upper middle class white kids.

You know what really sucks for grad students? Trying to eat organic and buy those expensive sandwiches/mixed baby greens from the farmer’s market on their stipends. Many still manage it if they have real-job spouses, or hush-hush “loans” from mom and dad (which they will *never* admit to having taken).

For maximum white person credibility, may I suggest convincing your university to offer a unique major that only you will ever take.
I believe that someone majored in magic at UC Berkeley. Obviously, they now work in advertising.

And extra credits for going to Oxford, Cambridge or the London School of Economics.
And majoring in dirigible aesthetics or Etruscan makeup techniques.
Then, you go to work in advertising.

This is too classic! I wish I had read this before I decided to go to graduate school. I would have been prepared. At Stanford, the way you show your street cred as a white graduate student is by moving to San Francisco and taking CalTrain down to Palo Alto. Then you have to complain how suburban and white Palo Alto is. Funny thing is, most of white graduate students from some town in the boondocks in Middle America that is just as white, if not more so, but maybe a little less affluent than PA. Sigh… Too bad I haven’t escaped these likes in Cairo. BTW, If you want to be a grad student and surrounded by white women, choose African studies. I’d say about 90% of the students are white women.

Excuse me, I have a graduate degree in psychology and I believe it has taught me that… blah, blah, blah… aww, crap, I can’t even think of a good silly reply!

Funny, funny, funny!!! I fulfill so many of these I feel all ashamed and dumb, but still have to redeem myself by posting a reply to a blog telling everyone how inferior I feel because of your blog. It’s such an evil circle. But keep this beautiful shit up! It’s a nice light to my day to go to the site to see the next dumbass thing I’m supposed to be impressed by that I actually am impressed by that makes me feel like a dumbass for being impressed by.

Good job, great site. I am a white, meaningless grad student who checks this site regularly… that’s sad. But sad in a delightfully good way. I love it!

I can’t wait until you get to “white people like soap and washing”, or “white people like feeding their children”, or “white people like putting up with some douchebag yucking it up about white people”.

God forbid people want to learn a lot of new stuff about a subject that interests them even though it won’t make them more wealthy just because they can. Yeah, there’s tons of people who go to grad school and then get all snobby about it and do everything you describe, but how often do you even have to deal with those people? Don’t they mostly just congregate with their own kind and drink chicory and talk with their eyes closed as they engage in bouts of intellectual one-up-manship? So what if people want to learn a lot about art or history or gender studies? What do you even care? As long as they aren’t narcissistic fuckwads about it, does the fact that they did something that took a lot of time, attention and/or money without any promise of financial gain really make you just look at them with utter contempt for their stupidity?

And fuck the rest of you braying sycophants, too.

I get it! It’s satire! It’s fucking brilliant!
All the people who aren’t dizzied by its sheer excellence are totally not getting the joke!
What? That its a stereotype based on members of a certain economic and cultural standing just like stereotypes about minorities – except most minority stereotypes are based on members of lower economic and educational backgrounds. The stereotypes of these liberal bourgeois bohemian whiteys are reductive and misleading but not nearly as much so as what blacks or latinos have had to deal with.

That’s it right? Am I missing anything?

Great. It’s still not that funny or that clever.
Sure, most of the snarky disses are dead-on accurate for the people they apply to. But so what? It’s the same joke over and over and over again.

What about black people who get a masters in gender studies? What about mexicans who get a masters in poetry? So what if they do get it and then go back to their old jobs even if it’s working a movie theatre? Why is that so much more pathetic than someone who goes to grad school for engineering or business or biology?

please note: I swear I am not a grad student and I don’t have plans to go to grad school.

Oh man. You missed this one big time. You may be right that white people love grad school, but from what I know, you’re way off on the motivation. Most of the graduate students in philosophy that I know are actually too embarrassed to discuss it with others outside the discipline because it doesn’t seem like anyone understands our obsession with it. I hate having to say that I’m a philosopher. But the fact is, I love the subject and can’t think of any other way I’d be content.

And with regard to whether the term “Dr” should be reserved for MDs: why use it at all? Personally I think it’s egotistical for anyone to use the title outside of their workplace. In a university setting, someone with a PhD should be addressed as “Dr” In a hospital, someone with an MD should be addressed as “Dr” Outside of that, use “Mr” or “Mrs” or “Ms” or whatever. The only reason I can think of to use “Dr” on the golf course or in church is to draw attention to yourself.

Been down the gradschoool road. That was a waste of time and money! a poor ROI.
Although, it is a nice place to meet white young women. Unfortunately, these women are on a strict career track, not girlfriend wife track.

Another thing white people like is to pay peanuts to the physicists and engineers (“nerds” and “Trekkies”) who make the “gadgets” that white people like. They also like making them work unsociable hours (so white people don’t have to meet them).

Sometimes, white people feel guilty about the fact that they do not understand the magic behind the gadgets; but this is OK, because white people also like entering politics. This gives them the chance to work with their lawyer friends to invent burdens of liability for the nerds and the Trekkies in order to keep white people safe. The financial penalties attached to these burdens help white people redistribute wealth to where it is most needed.

White people also like to classify complicated things like batteries and P.C. monitors as hazardous waste. This makes them feel better about the fact that they don’t know how to make them.

I agreed, Important knew that the degree of the graduate did not make someone clever. They have possibly read forcibly more, but in no way did artificial that they were cleverer, more capable, or more could be liked than you. Nice article. Glad to have made your acquaintance.

How ’bout the fact that during class discussion about the Colonialists or Faulkner, white English MA students will use sentences so convoluted that no one else knows what the heck they are talking about. Almost like a competition of “who knows the most archaic, 20-letters long word and can use it in a response to _Go Down, Moses_.”

Ugh.

*********
I’ve passed this blog along to all my white, English MA classmates. It’s awesome.

Seriously — who wants to talk about Lacan and Beckett anyway? I don’t!

Dissertations are hard? No, they’re tedious and not worth the time, but they aren’t “hard.” There’s a difference. You know what’s hard? The MCATs and the A’s earned in Chem, Physics, Bio, Biochem, and Organic Chem to even be one of the few to even get as far as sitting for the MCAT, much less doing well on it. Then there’s medical school, and don’t even get me started on that.

Veterinarians and Dentists take those same undergrad courses and very similar graduate classes. That’s hard work. Same w/ PhD’s in a science field. These people are the real doctors.

You do not have to be smart to get a PhD in English Lit, Woman’s Studies, etc. I’m not saying some smart people don’t choose that path, but c’mon, it’s far from challenging.

Chem 1 is the easiest premed class, and its about 100x’s harder than any of those bullshit classes I had to take to fill English and Philosophy requirements. Those fields of study are a joke, and the fact that anyone studying primarilly w/in them wants the same amount of recognition as scientists and physicians is laughable. These fine arts fields are more like hobbies than anything else.

And even though they technically can call themselves “Dr. ,” they are not real doctors. So they shouldn’t go around referring to themselves as “Dr. Smith.” “Professor Smith,” Yeah. “Dr. Smith,” I don’t think so.

Grad students rarely expect anyone to understand what they do or why. That’s fine (though it’s always delightful when people knock something they’ve never tried, or judge a field based on some introductory 101 class they took while hungover).

But the joke’s on the rest of you – laugh at those PhDs, sneer at the choices they’ve made, or how whiny and self-important they are all you want, you’ll still pay tens of thousands of dollars so that they can teach your children. And you do want your children to have a liberal arts education, like all good white folks, don’t you?

Actually I’ll pay tens of thousands of dollars to schools so my kids can have great science professors and intership opportunities. The useless English Lit, Anthro, and Sociology classes (aka GPA boosters) they’ll have to take to fill graduation requirements are just a biproduct of it all.

There’s a reason the lowest paid physicians make $140,000 a year while professors of art, literature, etc make like $45,000 a year.

On a similar note to your comment about professors in small towns, white people seem to enjoy complaining about whatever town or city they live in because it’s not New York, or whichever large city they lived in in the past (often for college) or want to live in in the future. It seems to occupy many conversations between white people in the city where I currently live, just as it did in the city where I used to live. Is New York some sort of white person paradise?

Adam – of course! There’s a post on this blog about Manhattan/now Brooklyn as a Thing White People Love.

Think about it, it’s totally understandable – profs are the whitest of white people when it comes to the arts, sushi, foreign films and what have you, and for them to be relegated to a non-big city is quite a tragedy. Though the bicycling and hiking opportunities and farmers markets run by actual farmers (not pierced hipsters) are a small comfort.

The serial comma/Oxford thing varies among different style guides. When I order items I tend to take the more modern approach (i.e. bread, butter and jam). In my opinion the “home town” sentence could’ve been left as is.

You all miss the reason white people go to graduate school: it’s fun! It’s also an exercise in conspicuous consumption (if anyone remembers Veblin): an expensive luxury good not easily available to those not of the upper classes, but of little inherent usefulness.

That’s not entirely true. If you’re going to be a capitalist, as many whites are, and will be involved in running the world, or at least some smallish part of the empire, knowledge of history beyond the undergraduate level (which is pretty lame these days), culture and human psychology are very useful skill sets. Not, of course, if you’re just going to be a clerk drone, but if you’re going to be running companies or governments, they’re almost indispensable.

Moreover, the sort of background knowledge necessary to get into a top program in (for example) European history is usually second nature to whites (who learned about both European and American history through their family trees from the time they were knee high to a grasshopper), but esoteric to nonwhites. This means that most top graduate programs in the humanities are fairly reliably white, except where the departments are completely overrun with political correctness. However, do not discount the class factor in admissions: professors (who want to think of themselves as upper class from their association with upper class universities) want students who are congenially upper class and will fit it.

Another point: NEVER call a PhD holder or a JD holder “doctor” — it’s considered gauche in the extreme. At better universities, professors are referred to as “Mr.” or “Ms.” or “Mrs.” rather than as ‘professor’. It’s part of the class distinction — we’re all ladies and gentlemen here…

Haha, yeah medicine is not so desirable as there will be lots of asian students much smarter than them and they will feel average and stupid. I think the most white people I know go to Cambridge and do 3 years of History of Art. I always hope that will end up with them on BBC2 talking about paintings but they always come home and work in the local museum for years whilst their parents pretend to be so proud in public but then beat them behind doors.

Grad School, it’s the gift that keeps on giving! For intellectual wannabees, it’s the perfect opportunity to take an extended cultural vacation and hang with the up-and-coming twentysomethings in your town. Plus, lots of white (and “acting white”) people want to punch up their resumes without working TOO hard; universities want to take their money without teaching TOO much. Therefore, grad school.

My chosen discipline is somewhat of a disappointment. Statisticians (the Anti-Cool) are in constant demand. We all develop arcane technical skills, leave grad school with good-paying jobs, and hang around with techno-geeks talking about admissible estimators or Bayesian epistemology. W00t!

Cato – it’s not conspicuous consumption, it’s conspicuous renunciation. You usually get paid – a pittance, no doubt, but you do get paid – to do a PhD. It isn’t paid for by mommy and daddy the way an undergrad degree is. You “repay” the university by teaching undergrads. The element of “luxury,” of course, it that you forgo years of income and that might not be an option if you have loads of undergrad debt, or a family to support.

Cato: perhaps I didn’t attend the “better universities” you mention, but professors I have actually spoken to, i.e. in a small-class setting, will often insist on being called by their first name. Or, more typically, their names are never uttered at all–you just raise your hand, and direct critical comments to other students. This goes with never criticizing the prof.

Mr. or Mrs. reminds me of junior high.

Rhetorical question for readers of this blog: does talking about “white people” make you feel akin to black people talking about “n******”?

“They can also impress their friends a parties by referencing Jacques Lacan or Slavoj Žižek in a conversation about American Idol.”

This gold, baby, Gold!

Re:#22

Yeah, History & English are important but everything you need to know you shoulda learned by Senior year of HS.

Re:74 Anon

My hats off to you! A true Philosopher! In my view this doesn’t apply to you. You are one a rare few that actually go to Grad school for the intellectual rewards. This Blog
skewer’s the great mass of pretentious assholes that really do go because they view life as a perpetual game of Trivial Pursuit.

Apparently these persons have no shame from the number of responses indicating they identify & embrace this entry.

Black people that pursue this avenue with arcane Black Studies programs are no less guilty of White Man’s Disease as i believe Fanon so aptly tackled in his dissection of Camus’ liner notes to Charlie Parker’s ‘April In Paris’ recorded live in Stockholm.

All so freaking true! Although in my masters program, at least I’m continuing to learn Arabic in an (arguably, depending on what member of a various religious sect you talk to) Arab country. Lots of whiteys are here doing the same, though. White people love to learn Arabic and speak it awkwardly to whoever will listen without ever reaching any significant level of proficiency.

So, at least in the comments section (most of which ignore all the other comments), there seems to be a growing consensus that anything that doesn’t earn a lot of money is a waste of time.

And that’s not ridiculously shallow?

Art and literature aren’t some new things exclusive to white society, they are the driving and cohesive forces of a culture. I’ll grant that the snobbery often surrounding “Big-A Art” deserves a good skewering, but to proudly say “I think art and reading is stupid” is to reveal much more about your own shallow, mechanistic soul than anything else.

Are the commenters here seriously suggesting that a good society would consist only of math/science professions driven exclusively by the pursuit of a big paycheck?

‘A perpetual game of trivial pursuit,’ ‘an excuse to avoid leaving home,’ my my. OK, here’s an Econ 101 refresher: academics are part of the economy too. They go to grad school. They learn enough to be able to teach. You pay them. They teach your kids. Your kids get better-paid jobs as a result. You pay the ‘pretentious assholes.’ What, you’d rather not do that? Fine, then send your kid to trade school or a polytechnic, or engineering school. Yes, I thought not.

By this very post, I am validating the point of this article, but alas, I will write anyway! This comment is in response to the debate over the use of the term “doctor.” What follows is an etymology lesson for the day: the term doctor is derived from the Latin word docre which means to teach. I cut this more detailed information from http://www.etymonline.com:

Doctor–
1) c.1303, “Church father,” from O.Fr. doctour, from M.L. doctor “religious teacher, adviser, scholar,” from L. doctor “teacher,” from doct- stem of docere “to show, teach,” originally “make to appear right,” causative of decere “be seemly, fitting” (see decent).
2) Familiar form doc first recorded c.1850. Meaning of “holder of highest degree in university” is first found c.1375; that of “medical professional” dates from 1377, though this was not common till late 16c.
3) Verb sense of “alter, disguise, falsify” is first recorded 1774.

So to those who think that “doctor” should be reserved for the almighty medical pracitioners and “hard-scientists,” think again. Those in the medical field should stick with their appropriate descriptor: physician, nurse practitioner, pharmacist, etc; in dentistry: dentist; in law: lawyer, attorney, etc. The term doctor should be applied to the “teachers” in religious institutions and universities.

White people really like this kind of amusing pseudo taxonomy (e.g., ‘A Field Guide to the Urban Hipster,’ etc.). While all white people like to read this kind of material, white people do so either because they are amused by such, or deeply offended. There is also a rare third class of white people who enjoy reading this kind of brilliant nonsense for the sake of making very reasonable and insightful comments about it.
In general, white people like to denigrate white people, unless they are white supremacists, in which case white people like to denigrate everyone who isn’t white.

Qua getting offended, #91 JAR is, ultimately, right on the money, because “white people” here does not refer to poor white people, nor uneducated white people, nor white people of a generation ago or hence; it refers to a certain timely cultural phenmmenon.

Qua insightful commentary, #104 A LITTLE WORRIED nails the rest of these folks to their message board: “Art and literature aren’t some new things exclusive to white society, they are the driving and cohesive forces of a culture.” Viz. the blog, however, it is (of course) the institution of graduate school, rather the study of art and literature. which is being mocked.

White people apparently waste their time formulating responses to this sort of delightful drivel. White people are pedantic and annoying, and try to shelter their fragile egos by veiling their sincerity in self-denigrating commentary about white people.

I’m white, and my other white friends and I went to business school or law school. It’s the sub-standard group of white people who pursue this bs humanities grad school path to a useless, low-paying professorship. Not the white people I want to associate with! I agree that they act annoying and superior, regardless of the fact that they wasted years on school and still make no $$$. I like to call these people the overeducated, underpaid white contingent. Losers!

What I don’t get is why these people need to pay for graduate school if all they want to do is read Philosophy. Can’t you do that on your own time and save your money? If they were so smart they could understand the books on their own without a professor holding their hand.

White people like to point out that this website should be called Stuff overly-educated yuppie liberal hipsters like.

Everyday, after all this time, at least one person will post something to that effect. I would have thought that this would stop eventually, but I guess they like it so much that they feel compelled to do it!

Wake up, people! Just enjoy the site for what it is and quit trying to dismiss it by saying its only making fun of certain kinds of white people.

every time i read this blog, i feel a tiny stab in my pasty white heart. this entry is yet another testament to my whiteness. i’m about to enroll in graduate school for (pretty much useless in the professional world) pastoral counseling. once i’m done with that, i plan to go to a different university to get a second masters in american lit (yes, i have heard that getting a second masters is about as useful as a hole in the head) and then go on to get my doctorate in modern and postmodern american lit. why all this american lit? because it’s fun to condescend to people who have never read eliot or vonnegut and, more importantly, because i want to be a professor, of course. preferably back in my hometown, which is in the middle of nowhere. if that doesn’t embody this entry, i don’t know what does.

um,
just a note on the sciences vs humanities phd thing..
my undergrad (cambridge, doncha know) was in science. my phd, which i’m currently working towards, is mostly humanities based (with some maths and biology just for kicks). I can reliably inform you that i find doing a humanities phd significantly harder than if i was doing a sciences one (well, i would say that…). science phds in the uk at least are significantly directed by the supervisor. you turn up, do some experiements (like factory work really, in biology anyway…standard procedures, wait for results, analyse, repeat), present them to the supervisor who says ‘hmmm, not enough/notquite right/why don’t we do this’, and then you go and do what he says next. conclusion: hard work, as it’s time consuming, but none of my friends doing science phds (yes, at oxford and cambridge) find themselves academically stretched.

in contrast, the work i do now is completely undirected. my supervisors know nothing about what i am doing (sub optimal, admittedly), i come up with the ideas for research myself, implement them, analyse them and then make new decisions on the basis of that. the ideas i have to work with are far more amorphous, and far more easily challenged, and i mostly feel like my brain is trying to explode because i have to synthesise so many subjects (languages, sociology, history, policy, ecology, maths).

Why get a masters or doctoral degree in some “useless” field such as English? You need one to teach remedial writing to college students who never learned to write intelligible sentences because they didn’t think English was important.

Many have commented that these items are things white liberals like. Not quite so fast. I’m a white conservative and a number apply to me as well—in particular this one.

I, too, went the Ph.D. route—in Philosophy, no less. Never finished. Stopped at the dissertation when one of my previous professors informed me that there were about 2,800 new Masters and Ph.D. graduates a year fighting over only about 800 openings in philosophy departments around the country. Now, as a philosophy grad student I was no math wiz, but even I could figure out the odds—especially coming from a mid-size private Texas university–weren’t in my favor. No Harvard, Yale, Northwestern, or Stanford attached to my name. Not even a UT, Penn State, or UC Berkeley. Reality sucks.

Worse, since I went directly from my undergraduate studies directly into the doctoral program, when I left, even though I had completed all of the graduate class work—not even a Master’s degree to show for it.

this totally describes a bunch of tenets in the building i live in. i’ve work my ass off for years at a faceless corporation were i now make a decent salary. i didn’t go to college or have a recognized undergrad degree and i’m in my thirties so i can’t think of masters programs unless i start from the bottom. my family viewed getting degrees as a luxury and, as immigrants, it was more important and practical to make money. my white grad school neighbors consider me rich and a sellout. they say things like i have fancy things cause i have a car and money for going out and buying things and they need to budget more. they all have masters degrees, attaining them or applying – every single one of them. they always talk about how poor they are and how they will have huge student loans after they are done but to me they are living the dream. if could have they job i have if they had the willingness for it but they chose not to. their degrees are in the humanities like social sciences and music. i may sound angry but i’m actually more jealous by the opportunities they have and frustrated that i they have a sense of both entitlement and victimization despite their privilege.

Many times I considered going to graduate school. MS or PhD in my field of Chemical Engineering would be impressive… MBA for fast track in management…. MFA for self-expression… In the end I realized much faster advancement from working hard and impressing upper management with initiative. Of course, I ultimately suffered a certain identity crisis and now teach English in (white people’s desired) Japan. While I am happy with my imminent achievement of master status in calligraphy, my sister becoming a PhD in Civil Engineering/Environmental Science may eclipse that.

Man, I wish I could be more white. Perhaps I need to import some furniture to Japan.

Ugh, 138 SF Worker – I just read your post… I highly recommend studying English. Tenets and ‘tenants’ have very different meanings. Were and where also have different meanings. If you aren’t too busy, I also recommend purchasing a computer with a shift key and comma key. Semi-colons and colons might also be helpful.

College educated or not, a basic command of English is a useful tool. 頑張れ！出来たらいいとも！

The NIU shooter was a graduate student in sociololgy who “had established himself as an authority on prison systems, having co-authored a manuscript on self-injury in prison and the role of religion in the formation of early prisons in the United States.”

Don’t know about you, but I never met a grad student in any of the humanities or arts who ever thought about the business side of what they were doing what they were actually doing it. Part of the experience of being a grad student in these subjects is being blissfully ignorant of reality. Only if forced to do so will an arts or humanities grad student consider their future.

And, by the way, I hardly regret my time in grad school. I ended up as a writer, making far more than I would have as a prof.

You are overthinking the math involved. When your ex-prof indicated that your major was competing for positions in departments, that should have been a clear sign that it was a waste of time.

If you are studying something to become a teacher of that thing, you have to wonder, “What is the purpose?” I think it was Nietzsche who said, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer.” While I think Nietzsche was a nut-job, you have to wonder about a field of study that has no application to life or business. I hope you have found a suitable path. 🙂

Everyday…..everyday I wake up and read this blog and drink my coffee. It used to be the WSJ or Bloomberg with my coffee, but this has moved them to the afternoon read….Just great! Some subjects that I would love to see….Hunting, Pick-Up Trucks, Gun Ownership, Health Clubs….wow, I could go on forever.

OMG. Stop following me! I dropped out of graduate school {literature} after waking up and realizing I’d be spending aaallll that money to basically be under/unemployed. BTW, the weather in San Francisco is wonderful this time of year;)

This posting couldn’t be more accurate!!! I’m finishing up my PhD (currently ABD) and am shocked at the starting salaries in my field. Although the pay is insulting, I have to keep telling myself that having a month off for winter break, a week for spring break, and summers completely free, it just might be worth it… I guess only time will tell. Top Ramen does get old after a while.

There are two things that “certain” white people like, by “certain” I mean the type that seem to inhabit Los Angeles.
The first is Kolchak: The Night Stalker and the second is R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet.

If you’re white and live in Los Angeles discussion of both of these is a requirement to show that even though you didn’t attend graduate school you are able to use what you learned from your one film class to analyze the material for its postmodern overtones.

1. Most white people know R. Kelly for that song from Space Jam, yeah the cartoon with Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny. White people discuss the brilliance of Trapped in the Closet like its black version of The Bicycle Thief. You know something is white if IFC dedicates an entire day to showcase it. If you want to be really white just mention that you loved chapters 1-12 but found 13-22 lacking, even though their the same damn thing. Lets not forget that R. Kelly is a habitual pederast who films himself pissing on underage girls. White people eat that shit up.

2. White people “in the know” will wax poetically about Kolchak. Even though it was canceled after one season and the last episode aired 30 years ago. So most white people are watching it on Bravo or TrioTv. Kolchak became such an “in” thing that powerful white people decided to remake the series but it turns out just like 30 years ago nobody was watching. If paranormal shit happens and nobody cares, did it really happen?

My Bachelor program (Computer Science) was, for whatever reason, located in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. So how pissed was I when I got bumped from getting honors cause I had to compete with the likes of Sociology and Psychology majors who never heard of the terms “integral” or “multiplication.” I suppose now that I’m a graduate student in computer science (see what I did there? Took the white man’s opportunity for shameless self-promotion), I guess now I can say I have the upper *pasty* hand!

Autumn, we’ve definitely lost our black cards, lol. I finished my MA in History and am now taking some pre-reqs in Poli Sci so I can apply for a PhD in Poli Sci. If all else fails, I can wax poetic about Hannah Arendt or Hegelian dialectic at dinner parties. Wait, aren’t dinner parties stuff white people like? …

Hilarious, as usual. On behalf of Psychology majors, thanks for omitting our discipline from that list. There’s more science to it than people think! There’s pseudo-science involved, people!
I’ll be going to grad school in a year and a half, so I’m glad to know that I can help to further the pseudo-intellectual goals of young white people. I think the overuse of prefixes such as “pseudo” (or “meta”) should also be discussed.

Hysterical and true, so true. As an ABD, I can’t WAIT to be a professor and move to a university town and be poor and overeducated! At the same time my blue collar roots mean that while I might act disparagingly if I heard references to Lacan at a party I would secretly be impressed.

#144: Humanities is a “… study that has no application to life or business.”

In my opinion, most corporate workers would be better served by a degree in rhetoric and composition than by getting an MBA. Most of the corporate clones I work with can’t think their way out of a paper bag on their own, and if they happen to succeed, they certainly can’t clearly communicate how they did it.

Also, life and business are not the same thing. That conflation is what has me worried.

As #125 implies, the need for critical thinking and analysis or the ability to successfully decode the nuances of a variety of texts are not needless luxuries.

Lastly, to #114: You’re right, I’m addressing the comments on the post, not the post itself. Overall, this is a smart and funny blog. It’s good for every group to be able to laugh at itself. It’s also important that other groups don’t laugh so haughtily that they forget their own ridiculous aspects.

I went to grad school, only to enter an associates degree program a couple years later so I can make more money. Should have forgone college AND grad school to begin with. Just start out with the associates from day one.

Not to disparage some genuinely funny stuff (kudos, Mr. Lander), but an honest look at this reveals a subtext of what may be called benevolent racism, for lack of a less negative word at the moment.
While many of these things are indeed affectations: ‘idea of soccer’, ‘being the only white person around’; values such as environmentalism, higher education, exposure to non-corporate media, social consciousness and the appreciation of substantive music and food- whether or not the interest is formed out of affectation or self-importance- form a stereotype that is hardly negative. The generalizations are similar to those that poke fun at Jews for being adept at law and medicine, or Asians’ proficiency with string instruments.
I think a large part of it is self-deprecation born of White Guilt, and to a greater extent, class guilt. A black person may become justifiably defensive when someone makes a reference to gold chains or fried chicken, but would anyone really become self-conscious regarding their desire to have multi-lingual children? I doubt it.
Once again, this is great stuff. I look forward to the book.
-Bendrix

I was accepted into a writing program at a very good school in the east coast. I took one class, realized the people who were there, and then thought better of my money and enrolled in a graduate program that’s guaranteed to get me a bleeding job after I finish. Best decision I ever made.

Besides, what with white people’s obsession of trying to one-up everyone else? All I can say is, dude, get some friends!

I am a white person who is a political science PhD and all of this stuff is true! I have always said that a PhD is more about hard work than about intelligence. I died laughing when I read this! We also like to complain about undergraduate students and how they are pampered and different, and that they have no idea about the real world, even though we ourselves have no idea about the real world, that is why we are in graduate school. Or maybe how people in graduate school are more authentic than those who went to law school or medical school because those are trade schools, we actually think intelligent thoughts. Something like that

But what if you’re in graduate school because you genuinely love to read and write, and have found a way to do that forever??

It has less to do with oneupmanship than it seems everyone thinks it does. At least, in my case. I’d rather spend my days reading and writing about things i care about, and forgo the “low five-figure salary” to do so.

It really depends on the subject you choose. I am about to get my Master in City and Regional Planning and it will double my current salary and allow me to move on to a bunch of certifications that will increase my salary as well. It will pretty much triple in the next 10 years and allow me to work all over the world. Hooray for grad school! Even though my own parents tell me I shouldn’t bother lol.

Ugh, this is the first time this blog has nailed me. I’m in graduate school, but only because I have to be, as library careers always require a Masters degree. I am most definitely not getting a masters in the humanities though. That’d kill my soul.

No one’s calling out the irony: complaints about “snobby” grad-school students coming from people who proudly declare that the only valid goal in life is to make lots and lots of money (particularly more money than those snobs, and thereby validating that I’m better than them)?

Studies in humanities are important for success in all fields because of the emphasis on critical thinking and creativity. The concept of “thinking outside the box” was coined by a person who has humanities degrees. The folks with MBAs are the ones who parrot the term (which is a good example of not thinking outside the box).

i’ve been reading this blog for a couple of weeks and virtually all of the other posts are awesome. they generally point out things that are somewaht quirkly and not so obvious. they get right to the point with a few witty examples and end with a great punchline.

this post is just awful. it’s like a thousand words…too rambling, and without any real wit.

Wow. You may be the most socially accepted racist I’ve ever seen. And white people seem to love you because they fear if they don’t, it may shine a light on their own prejudices. You’re pretty disgusting, close minded, and small.

Yet another priceless post. As I said in a comment on one of the earlier posts, I identify with most entries. And this one too – ony that I went to grad school for Computer Science. Oh wait, comment 25 covered that.

ok, enough is enough! I went to grad school to get my MBA, started working in an ad agency in SF, moved to NYC and then changed jobs….moved all the way back to west coast(now actually living in Los Feliz) to work in a completely different industry.

If you can find a way to stay in school, why not? “Real” jobs are boring, often mindless, and rarely do anything for the worker except provide a paycheck. But then again, in a culture where money = religion = patriotism, maybe that makes sense.

I like this satire, its funny because its mostly true, but its starting to just make white people here in the U.S. look plain better than everyone else the more I read it.

Sorry, lol (apologizing, irony), but I think that while this blog is putting a satiric spin on what is right about white people, its also pointing out how other communities are lacking in certain areas.

So according to the smug hard-science folks here, a PhD in theoretical mathematics or physics is somehow…more ‘real’ than a degree in sociology or Middle East studies that could, oh I don’t know, help all those scientists understand why people might fly those brilliantly scientist-designed planes into brilliantly scientist-designed buildings? Or understand how brilliant MBAs make investment decisions with your savings, so you’ll know why your house is suddenly worth squat? The world – money, matter and all – is still run by humans you know. Might as well learn a bit about what makes them tick.

(Oh, and the posturing in b-schools is just as bad, if different; and if the lectures and written materials they put out are anything to go by, everyone could use a remedial English class).

I got one for you, white people love writing, reading and commenting on nerdy, quirky, intellectual blogs like this one! Then they love to nitpick at eachothers comments and corrct eachothers grammar, spelling, etc etc. Generally jsut reinforcing many of the items on this list.

Our city is crawling with white Ph.D.’s telling us how backward we are and starting programs and initiatives to gently lift us from our slime…

However, I don’t worry, because they will all clear out of here when the grant money dries up due to the economy! Wow you will hear the rumble of fleeing white folks, running away like a herd of gazelle on the Serengeti, once those waterholes dry up!

# 12 had the greatest post of the day.
Instead of blanketing all white people this blog should definitely change its name to reflect the self righteous, apologetic, holier than thou, save the planet, my best friend is _______(insert other race), masters degree having, purveyors of useless liberal ideology white people.
They are the real problem.

Mango Girl,
Yes, that’s the next entry or should’ve been the title to this one: White people (or Oreo’s, Bananas, etc.) love B-School because they like pontificating on leadership principles and group dynamics.

so i’m actually THE most white washed asian. I grew up in a pretty white oriented city and hung out with either pure white people, or other white washed ethnicities like myself. your list of ‘stuff white people like’ is scarily a reflection of my one lifestyle. i’m currently in the BA Arts program, and hope to go into journalism or just fully dive into a major in English, perhaps even go to grad school for no reason but to enrich my already broad knowledge of the arts. Oh, and by the by, because i’ve become highly influenced by white people, i can only date white guys or white washed asians. haha, thanks for the reads =)

These are jokes people!
Wow!
I am not white but as a Black woman I have been the butt of many a parody, joke, stereotype etc. Have I run out ready for a protest rally? No. I giggle (some of it is true) and get on with it.
Lawd Have Mercy!
-r

I think the responses get more play than the original “article” . Laughed so hard at the part about “White people proving they’re smarter than other Whites”.. (snicker) Well, if it were as simple as that, what would be our alternative ?(Asians I guess, but they don’t care about the stuff we do, they don’t have the same “weltanschauung” as us, so we’re stuck) .

And umm, it isn’t “proving we’re smarter” , anyway, it is expanding upon ideas and entering into discussion and debate, not just “X is what the teacher or TV said, so this is what I believe, uh ..because it’s uhh “equal” .. and uhhh, yeah…” We ENJOY debate and discussion for it’s own sake at times. Get it now?
You have to actually form logical premises and arguments to play in the White people discussion game.
Oy Gevalt

It does not make fun of Rednecks for the same reason you don’t throw rocks at handicapped people or kick someone when they are down.
Middle class uppitty white people are such an easy target, as they drift through life bickering over Iraq war policies and Zach Braff movies. Quick lets hit the home outfitters before it’s closed.
It’s a blog that picks on white people who hate being white.
And thats why it’s funny.
White people who can’t be happy in there own ‘skin’ are the most fun to ridicule.

If you receive your PhD, you can call yourself “Doctor” no matter the field you study. Maybe you should enter into a humanities program. You might learn something about rhetoric. Except that you just sound bitter.

Also, college instructors with MAs, MFAs, ABD, and PhDs cannot call themselves “Professors” unless they have tenure. Just because you teach at a university doesn’t mean you are a prof.

“The second path involves becoming a professor, moving to a small town and telling everyone how they are awful and uncultured.”

I had a film professor (of course, what else) who matched this bit perfectly. Yes, our desert town was far too backwards for his sophisticated uber-intelligent fat ass. Fortunately he moved to Berkeley…where he belonged.

I’m going to spare myself and go to an affordable community college and get an associate’s degree is something useful. Thank you for confirming my realistic dream!

I also knew a woman several years ago who worked on a Ph.D. in art history. And it took her 7 years to get it done. She was one of the most spoiled brats I ever met and I was glad to phase her out of my life. You nailed it, perpetual weekends, slept in every freaking day of the week and couldn’t be resuscitated unless she had her half caff double decaf latte with soy milk and cinammon sprinkles.

@53: You’re missing the point of 39’s comment. For example, my father is an econometrician and demands students not refer to him as “Dr (insert last name here).” His reasoning: he’s not a medical doctor, therefore don’t refer to him as “Dr.” Most of the down to earth professors approach it from this point of view. Self-important academics with their heads stuck up their asses and something to prove usually don’t.

PhD’s in hobbies like Woman’s Studies and English Lit are useless. They read an article, comment on it, then discuss the article w/ their students. There is no way you need a degree for that. I couldn’t believe they were actual college courses. I spent those 50 minutes in the back of the class and getting a head start on my lab write ups for organic chemistry until the professor would inevitable pull me aside after class and comment on the work I turn in, yet ask me to be more involved in class discussion.

Graduate degrees in the sciences are more important for a reason – they are NEEDED. W/out them, people die and world commerce comes to a stop.

Things fake doctors are responsible for (none of this takes any intelligence at all):

-putting the “y” in Womyn’s Studies
-contemplating Dylan Thomas’s affinity for alcoholic strippers
-film analysis of Battleship Potemkin
-talking about literature
-talking about other people who talk about literature
-most other useless shit
-commenting on paintings, sculptures, food, film, and music (all things anyone can do w/out formal education

The formal latin definition of “doctor” in 1850 is no longer relevent b/c the term “doctor” has evolved over the years. When people say “I have a doctor’s appointment,” they’re talking about the smart, hard-working people who they literally trust w/ their lives, not some Middle Eastern Literature professor from the local liberal arts college.

Mango Girl: The fact that mummy and daddy don’t pay for grad school (in most cases) doesn’t mean it’s not conspicuous consumption. The fundamental display of conspicuous consumption is demonstrating that one does not need to be concerned with generating significant income. Middle class and ambitious working class students go to business school or law school because they understand they will not inherit significant capital, and therefore, whatever capital they will need long term – for their childrens’ educations, housing, investments, retirement, etc. – will come only from their own hard work. The archetypal white graduate student comes from an upper class family. He or she has been brought up knowing that earned income is irrelevant to his or her life and/or his or her social status – it’s the unearned income from generations of accumulated capital that permits him or her to undertake a career that does not pay.

We all knew graduate students who seemed to live just a little bit better than the rest, rarely ostentatiously so, but had a better apartment, nicer (sometimes bespoke) clothes, perhaps an expensive sports car, and more pocket money. Those are the ones for whom graduate school was intended.

The joke is on all of the middle class and working class kids who, buying into equality as preached at the university, think they, too, can become professors and live the good life like the professors they see. Not so.

As an ABD in both intellectual history and mathematical economics, I can assure you that doctoral level work in the humanities is infinitely easier than anything involving significant mathematics, even without the political correctness that now so befouls the humanities.

I changed my major from architecture to history after two years of studio-based torture. Naturally, one of the first questions that came to mind was “How do I work this so I didn’t just waste two years of education?” and the most obvious answer was “Become an architectural historian or preservationist.” Fortunately there are two routes into those professions: grad school (duh) and internships. I’m gonna try the internship route … Might not *make* money, but at least I won’t be forking thousands of dollars over to a university.

How do you know me so well? I hate you and your dead-on intuition. Blast you! This is hilarious, although this does not really say to me “white people” in general. It’s more about educated white folk. My relatives back in Ohio do not fit this interpretation of white people. They would be quite offended that you did not curse repeatedly, laugh after drinking Miller Lite, or make comments about sending minorities back on the boat they came from. You did, however, peg me. I am ashamed….yet, I should probably finish that PhD degree just for posterity’s sake, eh?

I just wrapped up my medical school interviews, so my life is anything but bitter.

BTW, I have a double major in biopsychology and – drumroll please – COMMUNICATION & RHETORIC! I realized how useless a degree in rhetoric was my junior year and grabbed a science major, which ultimately leads me to med school (although I’ve applied late and doubt I’ll get in for 2008).

Taking so many science classes at once was a shocker at first. I soon found out why all my teammates had to study on the bus/plane on road trips.

I love this guy’s blog. He’s a computer IT guy who, like me, probably has to spend a lot of time laughing and shaking his head at people preteneding they’re as smart as doctors/scientists but didn’t choose that route b/c they considered it selling-out; too mainstream. It of course had nothing to do with that “Oh shit” feeling during their first day of Chem 101.

Keep acting like these PhD’s require anything beyond simple reading and writing. Keep referring to yourselves as “Doctor.” Keep reading obscure literature and philosophy at the pub as if it takes more brainpower than me reading the sports page. It’s kind of sad. Tedious work isn’t all worthy of high acclaim. If it was, there’d be PhD’s for ditch diggers and nail filers.

Reality Bites! LOL! Finally the truth comes out….Right on! keep on going man, you are into something. I would also love to see in the future where the “others” fit and how we fit in this society. By “others” I mean the ethnics majorities in our country. ha ha ha.

Grad school isn’t just culturally white, it is discriminatorially white. What this blog leaves out is the historical racist policies that ENSURED graduate school would be the province for exploration of the white psyches. Talk to W.E. B. Du Bois about that; the University of Berlin refused to grant him a Ph.D. because of his “American” education. wink wink. He was the fist African American to get a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895, almost 250 years after its founding).

Also, what most people don’t realize about what professors do is they set the agenda of knowledge production in the United States. They don’t just discuss articles with their students–they write them (and, just like haute couture eventually ends up in Target, their ideas end up all over the damn place–from blogs like this to elementary school history textbooks). They actively decide WHAT COUNTS as knowledge–and actively discourage studies that they don’t feel are important (again, talk to Du Bois about that). For hundreds of years, knowledge has been produced under a white supremacist lens.

Grad school is a white privilege that has had devastating long term consequences–it isn’t just about who knows more Derrida.
Now that laws concerning segregation and discrimination are illegal, economic factors (who can sleep until noon and still pay for six to ten years of grad school) keep the poor and people of color out of higher education–and keep our knowledge production driven by whiteness and issues of white concern and interest.

this blog is often dead on, but only presents a small part of the picture (and perhaps evinces too much pleasurable navelgazing into whiteness).

p.s. and some little towns ARE redneck, which is why those same schools have trouble recruiting and retaining queer faculty and faculty of color–which means they maintain their white perspective.

Nice post, very amusing to read 😉
In a way you’re right, though, parents do tend to see some kind of genius behind every bit of nonsense their kid does, when actually it’s really nothing but nonsense. Teachers see little geniuses in children that are plain stupid – they even encourage them to continue. And so on and so forth.
It’s a frustrating world for people who are really highly gifted. They have to see people be nurtured who don’t deserve it, they have to see kids put into highly gifted programmes who are far off being geniuses.
Just to give an opinion from another point of view.

In this entire discussion there is one school left out of the mix: Divinity School. Apparently it is the quiet school, and the only one left that enables a person to earn an advanced degree in secret, remaining entirely below the radar in academia. But when one graduates from Divinity School, one is able to read ancient Greek, use scholarly tools such as exegesis, hermeutics, research skills. Also, one learns some counseling skills. And, one studies history (ancient, medieval, reformation, and modern). Some graduates also are able to read Hebrew. Biblcal studies are, of course, also part of the education. Critical thinking skills are honed. And, one acquires a debt that cannot be paid off easily with a clergy salary.

Cato:
“The archetypal white graduate student comes from an upper class family. He or she has been brought up knowing that earned income is irrelevant to his or her life and/or his or her social status – it’s the unearned income from generations of accumulated capital that permits him or her to undertake a career that does not pay.”

I don’t know about “archetypal,” but almost every grad student I have known – and I’ve known a lot – has NOT had family money to fall back on. Perhaps that’s the way it was in the old days (or still is in some disciplines that aren’t marketable at all?). But grad students these days (again, from my experience) are extremely aware of professional competition and earning potential and financial issues generally. They struggle and pay their bills. They apply for grants to make ends meet. They take on adjunct teaching. In fact there’s a lot of anxiety about the job market.

And why should someone need a family fortune to fall back on when they can make a starting salary of $50,000 in a job? Most grad students/academics also have spouses with jobs and live a perfectly comfortable genteel middle class lifestyle (kitchen gadgets, vintage stuff, espresso makers, expensive sandwiches and all!) They’ll always remind you they could have made more money elsewhere, and are doing what they do because they love it, hence the ‘conspicuous renunciation.’ And remember it’s just a teeny percentage of ‘white’ folks who do this, and if you’re nerdy and crazy enough to suffer through a PhD you probably do love what you do. In a masochistic sort of way.

hmmm. . .now tell me universities are neither racist nor sexist when it comes to graduate school and tenure decisions??

“While more than half the current college undergraduate student population are women, only 33.6 percent of full-time faculty are women.
While 29.3 percent of undergraduate students are now minorities, the percentage of full-time minority faculty is 12.2. Only 9.2 percent of full professors are people of color.”

The post about irony said it all. It’s pretty pathetic that the Go Team Science/I Love Money folks around here take such obvious pleasure in berating those who prefer to invest their lives in the arts. Gotta love third grade bullying tactics…or not.

“Another point: NEVER call a PhD holder or a JD holder “doctor” — it’s considered gauche in the extreme. At better universities, professors are referred to as “Mr.” or “Ms.” or “Mrs.” rather than as ‘professor’. It’s part of the class distinction — we’re all ladies and gentlemen here…”

Okay, so I got my undergrad/MA at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (which, I know, is an architecture/business/engineering school), but my profs came from Boston College, Duke, Stanford, etc., and they ALL wanted students to call them Dr. or Prof. The prof who was happy with us calling her by her first name? The Composition/Rhetoric director.

Regarding salaries: The hiring committee chair told me starting tenure-track profs in the English Department at Cal Poly start at 54-56K. I’ve also heard other English Depts. pay significantly more.

Yes, I’m working as an adjunct making $700 a class (after taxes), but I love teaching, and I want to make English/writing relevant. I’ve always wanted to teach. Whenever my students tell me they are majoring in X (usually some kind of engineering or architecture) because their parents want them to, I always secretly hope they will rebel. =)

I got a master’s (MPA) that put me 50k in debt when I could easily have worked for two and a half years and would have been in more-or-less the same position I’m in now, jobwise.

Now I’m thinking about getting a PhD. It should be noted, though, that getting a PhD is the only way to become a college professor, so it’s not completely foolhardy.

Thankfully, I think I’ve already realized that nobody in the real world gives a shit about how much you know about arcane subjects or how good you are at writing research papers…so, at least I’ll avoid that crushing 2nd-year phd disillusionment that hits most grad students when they realize that they’re working their ass off to hang out with snotty college kids and socially inept academics for the rest of their lives.

“so, at least I’ll avoid that crushing 2nd-year phd disillusionment that hits most grad students when they realize that they’re working their ass off to hang out with snotty college kids and socially inept academics for the rest of their lives.”

This blog is super-racist … and super-true. “It’s funny because it’s true..”
(even though, in all honesty, I don’t really find this blog funny, just a convenient and politically correct excuse to discuss race and racial stereotypes without being labelled a bigot)

I’ve gotten plenty of jobs with a BA in Anthro, and grad school can be useful, as long as you go for something semi-practical that pays.

Keep in mind, though, that a PhD is a lot of work for a slim chance of getting a tenure track faculty position. There are literally hundreds of applications for every position that opens up. This might ease somewhat as the boomers retire.

“And why should someone need a family fortune to fall back on when they can make a starting salary of $50,000 in a job? Most grad students/academics also have spouses with jobs and live a perfectly comfortable genteel middle class lifestyle (kitchen gadgets, vintage stuff, espresso makers, expensive sandwiches and all!) They’ll always remind you they could have made more money elsewhere, and are doing what they do because they love it, hence the ‘conspicuous renunciation.’”

I was in graduate school a very long time ago, and it’s possible things have changed significantly since. However, I think if you scratch the immediate surface of the situations of most white graduate students, especially at the elite universities, you will find far more family resources to fall back upon than you think. Remember, people from families with real money do not talk about it with people who don’t have money. Just because they’re struggling to pay their bills as graduate students doesn’t mean that they do not have (or will have) trust funds which will buy their houses (yes, multiple) and pay for the private school educations for their children.

$50,000 a year, of course, is not a negligible salary, but it’s hardly a middle class salary by itself. While a couple can live well enough (outside of urban areas, where $200,000 is probably a minimum for a real middle class life style) on two such incomes, as you suggest, such a couple cannot live well and privately educate their children (which, at boarding school and at private colleges, now can cost close to $50,000 a year or even more).

One of the reasons white people have been so successful historically (and, who would better know this than a graduate student in history, especially the history of ideas) is that they are concerned about their progeny, the ability to properly educate them, and the ability to accumulate capital to pass on to future generations.

“that crushing 2nd-year phd disillusionment that hits most grad students when they realize that they’re working their ass off to hang out with snotty college kids and socially inept academics for the rest of their lives.”

LOL. Of course, the other reason many (male) graduate students get started is they want to hang out with, and be idolized by, attractive and adoring white undergraduate girls, many of whom are more than happy to sleep with the less socially inept graduate students and professors.

Sure, academics develop a lot of pretty esoteric knowledge. But they also teach your children how to think, write, and generally develop the skills necessary for them to get a job in the presumably more “noble” fields of food service, public transit, and sales–oh, and the hard sciences, which apparently aren’t associated with white people, even though all but one of the Nobel laureates in physics since 2000 have been white people.

Most academics know they aren’t making as much money as their counterparts in business, law, and medicine. Many academics also still sleep in when they want to, spend their time thinking about what they want to, and advance knowledge that has plenty of practical applications and effects. Did I mention the extent of unstructured time for research, family, and hobbies? If that’s a terrible life that’s deserving of ridicule…

Political scientists and economists have done research that’s help to lower infant mortality, improve the transparency of democracies in developing and post-Soviet countries, and design mechanisms to clamp down on government corruption…but never mind that. Go ahead and make fun.

And to those of you in grad school or academia that think this describes you: do you really have that little self-respect? A five paragraph caricature perfectly describes you?

“Okay, so I got my undergrad/MA at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (which, I know, is an architecture/business/engineering school), but my profs came from Boston College, Duke, Stanford, etc., and they ALL wanted students to call them Dr. or Prof.”

Well, it’s all about class again. At the Big U (University of California) it’s “Mr.”, “Ms.”, or (sometimes) “Mrs.” The assumption under the California Master Plan for Higher Education (unspoken corollary) was that students at the University of California are (or will be) upper-middle or upper class, hence socially equal to faculty members, whereas students at the State Colleges (e.g. Cal Poly) are middle class or upwardly mobile working class, hence not socially equal to faculty members. Ugly, but true.

Reading this blog and bragging about how “accurate this blog is” or how cool it is and then laughing about it with their friends when, in reality, they are ashamed. They know that they are ashamed, but they laugh to cover it up. If they don’t laugh, other whites will persecute them by saying things like, “Where’s your sense of humor?” or “It’s just a joke. Calm down.” or “Seriously.” The reading of this blog will also secure a title of coolness among their peers. If someone shows you this site, you should respond with, “What a great blog! This is HIL-A-RI-OUS!”

I am white and I am guilty of all things on this blog. Before I read this, I thought I was clever and unique and different. I thought no one had caught on to my subtle effort in being hip. I feel happy to know that I can quit trying to be cool.

PS. I’m still laughing & I mailed the link to this site to everyone I know.

I found that when i was in undergrad a lot of my white friends would study whatever the hell they felt like studying. liberal arts, environmental studies, sociology, i was always jealous of that type of freedom.

years later they are still “exploring” there options….

keep this blog going FOREVER

A few other things i have observed about white people:

extreme sports
Hookah
open mic poetry
cross country
figi water
writing on jeans in high school
flip flops
second hand clothing

LOVE your list–very humorous! The white people you describe are mainly liberal, middle-class white people…and yes, I fit into at least half of your categories, and know/am related to people in ALL of them! Too funny!

Cato – well, I don’t think of private schools as a middle class option, but rather a very elite one. Perhaps that’s the problem, profs these days can rarely afford to send their kids to the top schools that they might easily teach at, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have perfectly comfortable lives. And with two in a couple earning at least $50,000 each, well, if that’s not a middle class income, tell me what is (the median income in the US is currently $50,000 for a family of four, I think).

And yes, grad school has changed tremendously in the last 10-15 years. Much more competitive and pragmatic. My undergrad profs pretty much waltzed from Princeton undergrad to Princeton grad school in the 70s, and you could go to grad school essentially if you had the right background and if you wanted to (and, usually, had a spouse who could support you). Now even the folks with trust funds just go to law school or b-school, and the competition for PhD programs is intense enough that it’s hard to be a drifter. Though yes, you’re absolutely right about the students with nicer apartments and cars (and these days, hipster clothing) and they do probably have some family money.

The science cheerleaders should probably remember that a little knowledge of geography, history, sociology and, yes, Middle East studies, would probably have helped avoid screwing up Iraq quite so badly, and saved their government a few trillion in public debt and hundreds of thousands of lives over the past five years. How’s that for “real-world applicability”?

All black people love fried chicken. In fact, it’s 90% of their diet! All jewish women are slightly overweight and, in their college years, had a cocaine problem. Asians, lets talk about asians. They shouldnt be allowed to drive! I’m sick and tired of watching them go the wrong way down cul de sacs!

i refuse to get into some silly white-boy lemme-scratch-yer-eyes-out cat-fight about my-Daddies-money-bought-more-than-your-daddies-money but that being said, it is obvious that a post-graduate degree in anything that includes the word ‘Studies’ isnt worth the paper it’s wiped on.

You can get a Post-Grad degree for reading the like of Stuff White Peoples Like as long as you write a 90page double-space dissertation on the fluff.

People just love to repeat that certain degrees are “useless” – without having the faintest idea what jobs you can get with those degrees. Teaching jobs, people (and sometimes foreign service jobs, or development jobs, or government jobs. This isn’t shabby stuff. If someone is willing to pay you for it, it’s a real degree. Be bitter about that if you want, but people do pay you to teach literature, and some people make money doing what they love. See #296.

Fish Noir Foul, actually a “fact” is uasually accompanied by some sort of evidence, be it empirical, statistical, or otherwise.

I’m white and poor and going to grad school to hopefully teach some day. I’m leaving a job where I get paid fairly well. And yes, there will be a big fat “studies” at the end of my degree. That being said, I don’t have a pony-tail or black turtleneck and I don’t really like Foucault. To me, Universities have quickly become the place were culture and race converge. Therein, if an individual is unhappy with society and its structure, these are the places were change can be most pragmatically achieved.

It is sad that people who, if they have a college education at all, are drawing solely on their experiences as undergraduates, are so bitterly critical of the humanities.

I’m sorry for those of you who actually had professors who required you to think of things other than dollar signs, but the foundation of American and European civilization, including those fields that you think of as being so critical and useful such as medicine and science, grew out of the humanities, and out of humanistic thought.

Intellectually sub-standard groups, such as the National Socialists, and the Communists, are guilty of trying to keep the technological advantages of civilization while discarding the foundational heritage of the humanities underneath. This led to intolerance, murder, and terrible loss of life.

It’s great if you (plural) are a doctor, or a scientist — I think that those are noble careers — but to deride the humanities simply reveals your own limited capacity to understand the significance of the intellect in forming and understanding the human experience.

By the way — I thought that the blog post was hilarious — it’s simply the petty small-mindedness of some of the comments here that prompted me to respond.

P.S. I spent ten years pulling big money as a manager in the IT field — money and the things that it can buy may be enough to make some people happy, but my true calling is historical research.

I deem that Foucault TOTALLY works. Man, this is the most hilarious post. I’m one of those white, Ph.D. suckahs. We’re the worst! I got my Ph.D., got a postdoc, then was unemployed for a year while living off of my parents. How much do I suck? A LOT. And you know what? It’s TOTALLY my fault. There’s no joke coming. It’s just true. Yes, I did the right thing to get the Ph.D., but I realize that I am completely privileged to have been able to do such a thing. And I have only my parents to thank.

And the “poor” thing. Yes, I have been very poor for many years, but (like many of my fellow grad students), I had the inside scoop on where to hit up the free professor retirement parties, I got free software from my university, I had access to an awesome library, a beautiful campus, a clean high-tech gym, etc. Grad school “poor” is very different from poverty poor, and if anyone thinks anything differently, they are living in lalaland. If I really needed money, I could take out loans, knowing that eventually, I’d probably be able to pay them back.

It’s a weird and very privileged life choice. And yes, a very, VERY white thing to do.

Sorry. I think you’ll be most disappointed if you’re really thinking that the university is where “change can be most pragmatically achieved.”

The university is all sound and fury with little societal substance. Many students enter, become “radicalized” and then either flunk out, get bored and leave, or graduate and leave. Fifteen years later, the vast majority are happily middleclass moderates or conservatives, paying their taxes to help pay the way for another group of students.

Where the change actually takes place is in the political realm. That’s where many who became more radical in college and who really bought into it turn after leaving school. They then take many of the ideas they picked up at the university—sometimes from their profs, but often not—and turn them into laws, regulations, or accepted norms–either through out and out legislation or through agitation until something changes.

I can’t help but to say “clander, get a real job and try to make friends who don’t just like to see you castigate yourself and every other person you know for the sake of “sink” humor.
But one observation that you did fail to make…is two extra years of graduate school does give you the right to be desultory towards undergraduates…Ya, know what’s going to happen next, is some one is going to come into your bedroom and rifle your dresser drawers for your keys and your wallet.

By the way, I work in a hospital with M.D.’s and I’m addressed as Dr. (Insert Name) by everyone, even by my superordinates. I will go so far to say my studying probably was tougher than my Medical School colleague’s. Their curriculum is set, while mine was mostly research oriented learning, where you are not explicited force fed knowledge but you must actively seek it out yourself. Granted we had to complete core classes in Neuroscience, Comp. Neuro, Neuro Anatomy and the likes, however, the majority of the program is your research and dissertation. Needless to say, I struggled through and now I’m earning a six figure salary that I could have never earned with a B.S. in Psychology. Moral of the story, sometimes a PhD is worthwhile, especially when your undergrad degree is worthless.

Hey, 2+ more years of dicking around and making “aArt”? MFA is the way to go. (The right school will pay you to go) And you have a great excuse for not having a real job and smoking weed and drinking import beers all the time! 🙂
CHEERS!

Graduate school in soft science is indeed a testament to small IQ penis size. What I have realized after4 years of Pharmaceutical graduate school? This shit sucks ass. Give me my golden paycheck when I get out and lets get on with life. I don’t give a fuck who is smarter than who, LET ME THE FUCK OUT!

I like the idea of reading from the viewpoint that white people exist as a group that must constantly be treated cautiously, often times requiring pacification, like a beautiful but volatile wild animal.

I just started reading this blog and I am seriously having a crisis of racial authenticity, here’s why:

1. I am working on my Doctorate in Counseling
2. I love sushi
3. I love not only traveling abroad but impressing people with it, “When I was in Abu Dhabi…”
4. I have a BRITA filter on my tap (I need a pass on that, tap water is Nasty!)
5. I voted for Obama (most black people do!)
6. My dream is to live by water

Anyway, you see where I am going with this… My Blackness may have been compromised somewhere along the way. How did this happen? How can I redeem myself? I’ve got some ideas:

1. Continue driving my gas guzzling SUV and NOT recycling.
2. Pollute the enviroment with the waste products from my hair relaxers!
3. NEVER EVER JOG!
4. Continue to live my life Dogless (I cannot stand nasty azz pet hair!)
5. Insist my child only speak English and poopoo other cultures
6. And for God sakes, if my must give up my ultra-ghetto “renter” status and actually buy a home, it must be in a suburb where I then am forced to commute into “the city” because I am seeking “better opportunities” for my kid.

Mango Girl, I think you’re hung up on ‘middle class’ … what self-respecting academic thinks of him- or herself as merely ‘middle class’? Academics, in my 40+ years experience with the breed, think of themselves as anywhere from upper-middle to upper class, in terms of culture and values, if not personal and family resources. The academics’ disdain for the values and lifestyles (NASCAR and voting Republican – horrors!) of the middle and lower-middle classes surely should suggest to you that academics do not, as a rule, think of themselves as ‘middle class’.

In fact, I’ve long thought much of the beef that academics have with the upper-middle and upper classes has to do with the fact that, since the mid-1960s or so, becoming a professor was no longer an automatic entree into upper class circles. (Blame this on the democratization and expansion of the universities with the GI Bill after WWII when all sorts of middle and working class whites, and increasingly larger numbers of Jews, not only went to university, but got graduate degrees and joined faculties).

Interestingly, the greatest taboo issue among whites themselves is not race (whites can be very blunt about it when no persons of color are around) but social class. America prides itself on not having deeply stratified classes as do the Europeans, but the American polite fiction that we are all somehow ‘middle class’ is simply a fiction.

I would argue that most of the students at the elite universities and liberal arts colleges come from the upper and upper-middle classes (the main distinguishing characteristics between the two being the former class’ reliance upon unearned income and the latter class’ reliance on earned income), with a smattering of affirmative action types and athletes from working class or other backgrounds.

When you get into the elite public universities (which I limit to places like Virginia, Michigan, California and a very few others), you see more upper-middle class than upper class students, and a some actual middle class students, but the same small numbers of working class or poor students.

The lesser public universities and colleges, for example the California State Universities (as opposed to the University of California system), the student body becomes overwhelmingly middle class, with some upper middle class students, but almost no upper class students. Also a larger proportion of working class or poor students, many of whom are there only the last two years because they’ve spent the first two years at community colleges, which serve as the upward mobility access points for the working class and the poor.

So, despite many efforts, the academic system is almost as segregated by class today as it was before WWII — perhaps even more so.

#82 should be
sending a link to “stuff white people like” to all of their friends. This shows how they are a “cool” white person who really despises white people, and can be proud of it. If any of their white friends complain that the blog is racist, or supports ridiculous stereotypes, they can use this as a perfect opportunity to tell their friend that they are being “too serious” and that they need to “lighten up” this will imply that the white person who is complaining is actually racist because they don’t hate white people as much as the person who sent the blog.

This site is great. They should also start up a stuffblackpeoplelike blog with stuff like “talking really loudly” and “being more black than other black people.” And a stuffhispanicpeoplelike blog with stuff like “using the ‘N word’ and not feeling guilty because they think as fellow minorities they are entitled to use it” and “using multisyllabic English words incorrectly.” I love racial humor.

Cato, I’m very interested in some of the views you’ve presented and I was wondering if you had a blog or some mechanism at hand in which I could use to ask you, perhaps, a follow-up question or two re: some of the class/academia issues you’ve brought up.
Also, Paul McCord @ 339: In a sense, I get what you’re saying. But at the same time, the political venue is far more bureaucratic and stagnant than the atmosphere present in educational institutions. Sure, maturity and the onset of “family life” breeds a certain sense of apathy and a tendency to view things on the micro level (and therefore a departure from what you “believed 15 years previous), but the assertion that “they then take many of the ideas they picked up at the university…and turn them into laws, regulations, or accepted norms–either through out and out legislation or through agitation until something changes,” seems simplified to point of absurdity. FWIW, I’m not saying that student-professor interaction is a mechanism for change, but rather any arena which enables the development and dispensation of ideas is an arena with a significant potentiality to inspire change.

Those of you decrying the social sciences seem – more or less – focused on the certain class stereotypes that have traditionally dominated the academic spectrum. In doing so, however, I believe that you are devaluing the importance that certain social sciences play in how we configure and rationalize our society. And, as a last note, there is significant diversity among the social sciences and so judging them on a equal plane is pretty ridiculous.

While I don’t tend to talk about obscure philosophers and whatnot, I am studying international development in England, which results in many awesome questions when I’m back in the States, such as “oh yes, what are you planning to develop?” I am ticking off a lot of boxes here–calling it “the states,” ‘studying abroad’ (thought it’s not cool to call it that for grad school), and going into a profession that the uninitiated deem to be 100% altruistic (even though it’s not). I’m not going to go on to a do a PhD and become a professor (at least not yet!), but I am going to go back to Africa to work…and then of course tell people back home about getting malaria and parasites and what it’s like to be a blond on the dark continent…Good times!

Zizek ROCKS!
this time i didn’t bother reading the comments so i dont know if this was said.
in order to achieve expert level whiteness, one must combine graduate studies with an interest in some “occidental” culture (mentioned earlier as knowledge of YOUR culture) and a summer of work in some sub-Saharan African nation. Preferably one that is portrayed in the news as really starving and destitute. Then, in every class, in every discussion, no matter how pedantic, they can make reference to “the women they worked with in The Gambia” as they casually curl their blond hair behind their ears and blink their blue eyes ever so innocently.

me: hey you want to go get some Tim’s* at break? i need a french vanilla to get through anymore foucault.
her: yeah sure. when i was working with the women in the rural collective in The Gambia, i used to tell them about how many women immigrants to Canada were empowered by getting a chance to work at Tim Hortons and thereby contribute to the economies of their home countries through remittance. i really know that i inspired the women of The Gambia to be entrepreneurs and help feed their [multiple of 10] children in some way. but THEY were such an inspiration to me. that’s why i’m doing cultural studies for my post-doctorate work.
me: ….uh ….yeah….

*Tim Horton’s donuts. The mainstay of all university students in southern Ontario and Quebec. hell, its like vitamins for Canadians. a tim’s was opened in Afghanistan so canadian troops could have tim’s on their breaks too.

As an MBA holder myself I completely agree. It really irks me when come MA holder thinks that their graduate degree is on par with a real one (ie: MD, JD or MBA from good school, or any MS in a real science).

Sorry but your MA in english or sociology is definitely NOT the same just because you can put that you’re a masters degree holder on those little bubblesheet questionnaires.

By this same token I understand that masters in engineering people might look down a bit on us pity MBA holders as not being up to their same level of quantitative rigor..until they wind up working for us. 😀

As I mentioned I am also in grad school and this has given me some insight into some other things white people like: The idea of socialism, Trying out an eastern religion (also include prayer flags), Farmer’s markets, and oh of course blogs. Some of these might have already been used (I just started reading), but it makes sense to me. I love this blog because I see lots of my firends and even myself doing these things, and it is so damn funny. Blog on!

You are one of the most brilliant, muthafucking, race-aware, white dudes ever, period and exclamation mark.

And you know whats even funnier than your truthful tongue-in-cheek observation, is that Black intellectuals waste all their time and money going to graduate school trying in vain to immulate White intellectuals.

(note – BigUps to thoses Black intellectuals who after all that bullshit, become even more down for the Cause.)

Chuckle, chuckle “The best thing you can do is to act impressed … This helps them reaffirm that what they learned in graduate school was important …makes white people easier to deal with when you get promoted ahead of them.”

I’m beginning to love, LOVE, all the people who feel they must express how these posts do not apply to them in either a shrill, defensive manner, or in a boorish, superior one.

Also, the fact that some people are still calling this site racist is bizarro. Track down some old documentaries about “native peoples” that were made before the 80’s and you can see where the tone of the blog comes from. Clander has taken the old, horrofic ways that white people used to describe others and turned it right back on us. It’s funny. Super, duper funny. I mean… people… COME ON ALREADY.

Also, to all the people who say “this blog is about yuppies” blah blah blah. Yes. Yes it is. OK? Move on.

As this blog attests, white people also seem to like cynicism quite a bit. The thing about cynicism is that, while initially amusing (as I grant it is generally done here), it gets tiring fairly quickly, and eventually, irritating and even obnoxious. This latest posting sounds like the sad whining of a failed PhD candidate, with bad taste in friends, and little interest in or access to the life of the mind.

so yeah graduate school is about turning intelligence into expertise. Declaring areas of study unimportant due to lack of money making potential is essentially placing money as the highest measure of success. If you are dumb enough to think that money is everything then you have never been around unhappy overworked upper middle class people

Look, the way I see it is if an individual is really a lover of art or literature and they feel the need to pursue it more in depth in order to become an expert on the matter than I have no problem with that. If your an asshole who is just doing it to be pretentious than fuck off!

P.S. people who get a bachelors in the arts, see previous post, with the intention to go onto law school are good by me.

studying biology isn’t white?! usually this blog is rather on the money for me, but seriously, I hate these topics you’ve listed. I need numbers or else I don’t believe you. I was feeling so white and now it has gotten smeared with some other color! hmph.

Don’t know if the article was funnier than some of the postings but OMG, too funny. Of course we need to laugh at ourselves for caring so much about rhetoric and theory but without higher thinking and/or appreciation of ideas, art, concepts humanity would still be in Cromagnon, troglodyte states…anyone ever heard of a place called Afghanistan?

But if you like the circular conversations about how seemingly useless these advanced thoughts (some might call enlightenment) are you’ll love the book Hung Jury, available online online at http://www.EssentialArt.org by clicking on Essential Literature then “Buy A Book.”

PS yes, it was written while studying Marx, Neitzche and Freud in my Social Theory and Political Economy undergraduate major before I went to study photography at the School for the Museum of Fine Art.

You need to do one on outdoor gear. Expensive, rarely used for it’s intended purpose, outdoor gear. This however bleeds into vehicles and is also related to water bottles (which was genius by the way).

*Shrugs.* I went to graduate school because I love to learn, and I like helping other people learn, and I can’t imagine a better life than to get paid to study and teach things that are interesting to me. Ideas are incredibly exciting, and intellectuals contribute tremendously to the vague inarticulate perceptions held by everyone else, which dictate their choices and control their lives.

No way #428, #198 Ddae is right on! How dare you say that white people go to graduate school so they can one-up each other in conversations! Don’t you know that all cultures and races are exactly the same, and are perfect, and have no funny cultural idiosyncracies and merely mentioning that they might makes me want to throw up my chai tea. In fact I am half tempted to put down my iBook (where i’m blogging about Darfur), throw on my birkenstocks, and ride my segway (which has been converted to run on canola oil) down to my college guidance counselor here at berkley and explain to him how your racist ideology leaves me feeling disenfranchised. Also, I’m going to sue you.

So if the multilingual kids don’t work out, you can always claim to have a Native American grandmother (kind of like Tori Amos) in order ameliorate some of your white guilt and glom on to somebody else’s struggle. Double points if you write a fake memoir claiming to be a part Native American gang banger:

I was at a party recently and encountered someone getting his PhD in history. Among other bon mots, he offered, “Writing a novel is constructing a monument to one’s ego” and “I hate when people talk to their dogs. It’s so infantilizing.”

Like a monkey flinging its own shit, his lack of self-awareness seemed innate and ceaselessly comical.

“After this crisis, a white person will follow one of two paths. They will either drop out and move to New York, San Francisco, or their original home town where they can resume the job that they left to attend graduate school.”

The above is your correction. The Oxford comma following “San Francisco” is optional in a list. Also, if you want to REALLY correct it, please be sure that the nouns and pronouns are consistent. Grammatically, it should read:

“After this crisis, white people will follow one of two paths. They will either drop out and move to New York, San Francisco(,) or their original hometown where they can resume the job that they left to attend graduate school.”

And that’s just grammar. Maybe I should go to graduate school so I can expound on grammatical theories instead of correcting punctuation and structure on a blog.

Cato, you seem rather hung up on academics as elites 😉 They shouldn’t be, and they needn’t be. You said that $200,000 was a “middle class” income in an urban area, which is rather inflated. Perhaps the class profile of academics is changing. That’s fine. I agree that Americans (even academics) have trouble with the concept of class to begin with, but actually most academics I know are very much reconciled to the idea that they are going to be middle or upper middle class and not rich like their investment banker college buddies.

I don’t know which academics you’ve been hanging out with if they all feel they deserve to be able to send their kids to the top prep schools.

I never went to grad school, or even finished my B.A. (in music!), instead I’ve read about post-structuralism, deconstructionism, the Frankfurt School, art theory, queer studies, neo-Marxist literary analysis, etc., on my own time. It saved me a lot of money and I still get to impress other white people at dinner parties! I admit I feel a bit of white anxiety once in a while because I haven’t read any Žižek yet.

F***ing Brilliant as Usual! But you forgot the ultimate white people degree: anthropology. This way they can feel superior to other white people who don’t understand globalization/diversity, have discussions about how Deleauze, Focault, and Bordieu are more important to global society now than ever before, and do it all in a guise of self-important (yet denied) neo-colonialism.

Grad school also helps white people keep from growing up, very important in white culture. Anthropology is almost, but not quite as good as the penultimate Comp Lit (that you so accurately pegged), followed by the ever useless Ph.D. in dance history/studies/performance/ whathaveyou.
I hope this blog takes you far. You deserve it!

“As an MBA holder myself I completely agree. It really irks me when come MA holder thinks that their graduate degree is on par with a real one (ie: MD, JD or MBA from good school, or any MS in a real science).

Sorry but your MA in english or sociology is definitely NOT the same just because you can put that you’re a masters degree holder on those little bubblesheet questionnaires.”

I’m sorry but passing a two day, six essay exam testing on any work in the 10 point font, four page reading list (Beowulf to Rushdie to Linguistics to Theory to Comp) is not an easy task. And, no, I didn’t have a thesis option. Give us some credit. I worked/studied my a** off.

Wow remember when learning was about the joy of learning.
Its why the sane people I know do their postgrads.

Is the number one tip-top first on the list thening white Americans like looking down on those with less money than them?
Or stating how education is useless unless it leaves you earning loads of money.
Ahh status anxiety its all so deliciously pointless.

So, I guess I’m officially white now. I love everything listed- well, not divorce or hard break ups. And I think an MFA should specifically be mentioned in the grad school category. I’ll have to break the news of my new found whiteness it to the KKK. Those guys should really stop hating me now. Hah! Actually, I think this list describes a middle class east coast lib. It describes both of my siblings too (both black).

And now, what working class white people like more than anything is to convince themselves how they are much better of and superior to working class people of other races and ethnicities. This applies to immigrants also. For example, white working class immigrants will feel superior to local ethnic minorities people even if they are middle class. This is however called racism. Because it is.

heheheh, a phd is a sign of perseverence not intelligence.funny but true. i don’t know why people who do this consider themselves smarter, they simply have accumultaed more information and are more perseverent. nice
check me outhttp://miriamwright.wordpress.com/

People who can write well are people who can think well. Some of the prose that comes forth from the fingers of physicians, engineers, and other hard science or medical professionals leaves something to be desired. Consider how well FOB Chinese nationals compete in those fields in the US.

As for the notion that intelligence is best measured by money-seeking behavior, no comment.

I am white with a Ph.D. in history (Yale) and a J.D. (Duke). I live in a small, white-trash town and teach in another small, working-class town. I don’t know much about theory, because truth be told, historians don’t learn much of that, even at Ivy League schools (Duke is full of it, except in the law school). I am superior to everyone and no one. I have more education than almost anyone on the planet, and I love that. I like being educated. Graduate school was the best time of my life, but law school runs second to high school in being just god-awful. I am in debt up to my eyeballs from law school. Everyone else thinks they are superior to me because I teach and I have a Ph.D.

I don’t know where this is going except to say that I honestly love 99% of what I do. I teach people who come from the same economic background I came from (working, lower middle class) and I do research about the past that I think is accessible to people like me, people who don’t give a crap about theory but love to learn. I hate my home town and New York City, I do not wear black all the time, and I gave up eating brie and drinking red wine years ago because they cause migraines.

I thought your blog entry was pretty damn funny! I remember people like that from grad school.

I see some visitors here, defending study for study’s sake, take offense at some of the remarks poking fun at some aspects of grad school. I seriously doubt too many here would argue that humanities or art studies are, in fact, a waste of time. That being said, many of us who have spent a good deal of time in graduate school recognize the absurdity, the pretentiousness, and the inflated egos of many of our fellow students (and very possibly ourselves at that stage in our life).

An example. I overheard this conversation while a TA. English and Philosophy TA’s where I went to grad school shared offices. I overheard this conversation between two English doctoral TA’s (it has been over 25 years, so, no, it isn’t verbatim, but close):

TA One: “God, I pity those people who waste their pathetic lives working instead of studying the great works of literature and art. I think I’d rather commit suicide than live a life like that.” (hard to believe, but this was a serious comment, not satire or a joke)

TA Two: “Linda, don’t you think that’s a bit harsh. Most people have to work for a living and don’t have the luxury of spending their life studying.”

TA One: “You know as well as I do that’s nothing but an excuse. They’re simply not willing to sacrifice. They’re nothing but shallow shells of humans out to make a buck. They’re not like us. We sacrifice for the love of literature and art. I’ve got a husband and two kids. I could be out working, just like them, playing the Capitalist game. Instead, I’m willing to sacrifice for the love of art, the love of knowledge, the love of becoming more than some useless bag of bones, knowing nothing but an idiotic life void of beauty and the most important knowledge ever put to paper.”

TA Two: “I didn’t know you’re married. What does your husband do?”

TA One: “He’s head of Oncology at (major research hospital).”

Same conversation, a couple of minutes later:

TA Two: “Have you registered for Dr So-in-So’s Theory class yet?”

TA One: “No, I can’t. I’m taking the boys (her sons) to Europe this summer for a couple of months. I think it is critical that they really experience Europe before they go off to college.”

That is what is being derided, not the education. Is she typical? She is hardly ‘Everystudent,’ but there are many almost as arrogant.

LOL, this is hilarious. I’ve often said that I want to go back to get my PhD or my MFA … yes, I love to think and learn and write and all that, but the late mornings and four-day weekends are part of the appeal!

You forgot one caveat, when white people fail to either become professors, or get the better employment they sought in the first place, they can always return to the one thing they shunned throughout their undergraduate and graduate degrees: the Education degree.

“I seriously doubt too many here would argue that humanities or art studies are, in fact, a waste of time.”

I submit that it is, in fact, a waste of time to pursue a graduate degree in arts and humanities, or an MFA. Who benefits? The student? They are putting off becoming an adult (getting a real job). Society? Not a lot of jobs for poets.

Grad students such as the ones described in this entry are lazy. They definitely deserve to be teased and mocked as babies who lack the maturity to realize that college is over.

Too funny… ! I think the standard issue uniform is a tweed blazer and faded jeans. Add a pair of hiking boots for winter or white, no-frill sneakers for summer (which haven’t been untied, and you’re good to go! 🙂

I did say, “not too many.” There certainly are people who will not see the benefit in the arts or humanities–and possibly not understand that the world they live in is the culmination of 2,500 years of those very same subjects. Most, however, will apprciate their importance and their impact, seeing the interconnectedness of those disciplines, at least up until a couple hundred years ago. If it were not for literature, philosohy and art, we wouldn’t have the math and sciences we have. The ‘important’ subjects would not exist as they do.

For those interested in a little more than baseless arguing, some stats from the NCES:

“Career-oriented majors were quicker to get a job and less likely to be unemployed, but by the time 2003 came the academic majors had mostly gotten through grad school and caught up; there was no statistically significant difference in 2003 earnings between career and academic majors, after controlling for other factors.” – The Quick and the Ed

For those interested in a little more than baseless arguing, some stats from the NCES:

“Career-oriented majors were quicker to get a job and less likely to be unemployed, but by the time 2003 came the academic majors had mostly gotten through grad school and caught up; there was no statistically significant difference in 2003 earnings between career and academic majors, after controlling for other factors.” – The Quick and the Ed

[I added the links in an earlier comment, but I guess HTML is banned or needs approval. You can search the NCES website for: “Ten Years After College: Comparing the Employment Experiences of 1992-93 Bachelor’s Degree Recipients with Academic and Career-Oriented Majors”]

Now, come on. Not only white people go to graduate school. The former posts nicely parody most white Americans, but now this post is getting silly!

Why is the idea of getting more education so threatening to this author?

Also, white people are less likely to get funded in graduate school. Graduate schools bend over backwards to get non-white students to come to their school. The author should not demean people for wanting to (and going into debt in order to) earn a graduate degree.

I’m white and have a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology (how did that not end up on your list of absurd degree programs), and teach at a major research university in a small town in the MIDWEST (of all places). Truly it is absurd.

Anyone who gets their jollies by telling others to “grow up” or “get a real job” probably hates their own life so much it’s not even funny. Otherwise, I don’t possibly see any good reason for Serious Business types to hate on people who don’t want to take business seriously.

My mother, who had a B.S. in chemical engineering, used to say that B.S. stood for bullshit, M.S. stood for more shit, and Ph.D. meant piled higher and deeper (that would refer to my dad who had a Ph.D. in chemical engineering). Of their progeny, one kid got a Ph.D., one got a Master’s and one dropped out of college after about a year (that would be NS or “No shit!”) Incidentally, No Shit!, when in the workforce, made considerably more money than Piled Higher and Deeper.

For a more complete response to this entry, from a white girl who is happily piled higher and deeper in the White Trailer of Academia, go to:

The “proofs” offered here are mostly based one person’s experience or something someone’s mom/professor/boss once said (and with little regard for any of the other comments). There’s no scope to any of that. Check out a few studies that track these very things over time and over larger groups than just a few people (see #470 for instance).

I think it’s also because of the society. Some people think that a Bachelor degree worth nothing because there are more and more people going to college and obtain one. So the only way to be different? Get a Graduate degree.

Wow. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you wrote #81 about my ex boyfriend.

Although I made over twice as much as he did (with my LOWLY Associates Degree)… whenever he disagreed with me on something he’d say “I’m sorry, which one of us went to grad school? That’s right, it was me. End of argument.”

I guess because I didn’t go to grad school I couldn’t possibly be right about anything or know more about certain subjects than he did. Because (bow down to him) he went to GRAD school, so he must know it ALL.

I am African-American and have a Ph.D. in Mass Communication. I also live in the middle of nowhere and constantly complain about the town of 5000 where I work as an assistant professor. I refuse to live there and travel from 33 miles away each and every day to work.

As a white person who has studied abroad, is in grad school, worshipped michel gondry, dated asian women, etc etc…, I really find all of this to be an accurate portrayl of me(although I hate vegetarianism, and self-righteous eco-leftists). The only thing that I wonder though is if this blog reflects what white people like in general, or just what a certain group of privelleged white people like. After all, don’t many white people really like Nascar, Chuck Norris, and Shania Twain?

Yes, all liberal arts degrees are useless. You should avoid these programs like the plague. Knowledge is useless unless it will net you a buck or two. Zieg Heil!

As a matter of a fact, you should cherish the 5 years you spent in the 3rd grade. Congratulations on your GED! Support your local “No Child Left Behind” celebration of mediocrity. And make sure they spell your name correctly on your shirt.

I worked with some self-righteous douche bag who was pursuing an MFA while working as a file clerk in a law firm in Los Angeles. He always got on his soap box about how society should be paying for his degree because he wouldn’t be making much money when he was done.

I always enjoyed pointing out that he wouldn’t make any money because no one really cared about what he did. I loved making him cry.

Why do white people take pride in the fact that they’ve sucked the world’s resources out of everyone else’s hands so they can spend six years of their lives sleeping in and playing Nintendo Wii with a receding hairline?

Honestly, it is disgusting.

And then they blame everyone else when shit hits the fan.

If someone is going to take blame for Bush and his administration, it falls squarely on white liberals who are too effete to fight back.

this blog is pretty funny. it doesn’t really make me laugh out loud, but i sort of snicker.
anyway, this is only a certain section of liberal and affluent white culture. People seem to forget that for every white person who fits the hipster paradigm railed on in this website, there are 5 to 10 that want to kick that kid’s ass.

bragging about doing soulless work to make more money is just as shallow as bragging about being poor to do something creative.

earning the highest salary doesn’t make you any more attuned to the ‘real world’ than understanding lacan or foucault. many people try to earn lots of money so that they can move away from the ‘real world’ to pasty, gated suburban neighborhoods, just like those who stay in school for the extra seven years instead of jumping into the job market.

get over yourselves. there is no shame in admitting that the real world, whatever the f*** that is, sucks sometimes. and typing in a cubical all day surrounded by people just like you doesn’t give you any more ‘reality cred’ than sitting in a classroom instead.

Not to forget about the most worthless Ph.D for smart, talented white people…the doctorate in musicology in baroque repertoire/French/Italian/German. Does it get anymore snooty that this? 4-6 years in the dusty archives without any chance of a job!

I love the comments on this topic! Particularly the PhD vs. professional degree “who deserves to be called ‘doctor'” discussion. I can’t think of anything whiter than two groups of such privilege (MDs and PhDs) arguing over the exclusivity of a term…

And to rpost3: did you ever stop to consider whether your chemistry classes were just difficult for you? It sounds like you just might not be cut out to be a MD. Good luck.

Have you been sick lately? I ask because your entries have lacked some zip over the past two days. You know there is a serious bug going around… which makes me think that white people like alternative medicine.

I am tired of kids coming up to me on the campaign trail and complaining about how much college cost. I didn’t tell you to go to Columbia or Dartmoth. Christ, go to community college. You can pay for it working at Chick Fil A. I can’t afford my books. Really, that is a nice ipod you are carrying, those look like designer jeans, bet you got a fancy computer and flat screen in the dorm room…. Little sh!ts. They just don’t want to spend there money on college, they want to buy weed and download music all day a let the tax payer pick up the tab. I am so sorry it cost some much for you to hang out all day on the lawn at some beautiful capus in new england discussing how vile wallmart is and how we are responsible for all evils in the world even though the US is less that 400 years old and evil has been around a little longer in most countrys. I am sorry that your paying for tivo so you don’t miss american idol comes before you paying for tuition. Life just isn’t fair. I guess that is something else your looser teachers fail to teach as you spend 30k a year to learn to hate your country but not actually become a productive member of society. God forbid we go one year without a million lawyers graduating while we get like 50 decent engineers and most of the are from China and India and will take it home with them. No you go ahead and pick art history while the university of bangalore produces millions of IT specialists. Then you will come to me and say NAFTA is talking all the good jobs oversea’s. Ex hippie teachers telling you to hate the company that will provide you with food, shelter, healthcare, and all the dumb toys an american could want to buy. All they ask is that you get a business degree or study finance maybe become an architect and build something. No, instead you will study anthropology with little or no hope of employment and have to spend another wad of cash getting retrained for actual employable skills. So yes, children I hear your crys of horror for the awful hand the gods have dealt you. But I promise I will help you if you just vote for me. Then you can go back to voting for your american idol. Vote for me then you can vote for the little gay Noriega kid. I will give you change to pay for books and some change to pay for tuition, and you will love me and my CHANGE. They will creat new coin for my face. It will be a 30cent coin to represent how much change you get for every dollar I take…. CHANGE

“The required intro philosophy/lit/anthropology class I took was easy and bullshit, therefore all of these fields are easy and bullshit.”

It’s true, it’s possible to get away with bullshitting through humanities classes. This is partly because professors have low (and realistic) expectations of the intellectual capacity and desire of idiotic students who take these classes because they’re required.

If you truly engage with these books, though, if you really do the reading and undergo the patient work of getting at what the author means and whether you agree with it and why, you’ll find that it’s intense, difficult, life-changing stuff.

All of our institions, our social situations, and and any opinion anyone holds about the world has its roots in these “easy” and “useless” texts that everyone dismisses out of hand.

If you want to change anything, if you want to live differently, you need to get these ideas.

whoa @ the amount of angst being spewed back and forth over these comments. The condescending maths/science nerds (YOU COULD NEVAR UNDERSTAND MY SUBJECT!1) actually make the pretentious white hipsters look good.

What about fields like education? I did not major in education as an undergraduate and when I decided to become a teacher the difference between earning a teachign certificate and earning a master’s degree and teaching certificate was 2 classes. Needless to say I went for the master’s because those two classes significantly increased my paycheck, plus why not take the two extra classes and learn more? Also, the vast majority of my classmates did not have time to hang out in coffee shops because they were already teaching full time or working as teacher’s aides full time. Those who did not were typically earning their degree after taking time off from teaching to raise a family.

Mrs. F, thank you! I think you have provided a uniting issue. Humanities PhDs, scientists, and MDs can all agree to scoff at people with education degrees. Particularly the EdD, what a waste of a good white person!

Heh. A woman that lives upstairs from me just wrapped up her doctoral thesis. She’s 47 and does nothing; in fact, I saw her outside of a coffee shop eating a SnakPak pudding (vanilla/fudge swirl) and reading Entertainment Weekly.

Minorities – especially recent immigrants – go on to the hard science and/or business. Others who have been here a bit longer go to the social sciences and end up with policy jobs in the government or in a think tank.

I have been to america just once and all the white people i know are from europe. Am sure not all white people are like this but what the hell this is really funny!
Thanks, you saved me from wasting my money on grad school.

Some of the stuff in the comments is true for obscure grad degrees. However, having a grad degree nearly always translates to earning more money. Bitching about stuffy obscure-lit grads is one thing, dismissing graduate school outright is just stupid and self-defeating.

“After acquiring a Masters Degree that will not increase their salary or hiring desirability, many white people will move on to a PhD program where they will go after their dream of becoming a professor. However, by their second year they usually wake up with a hangover and realize: ‘I’m going to spend six years in graduate school to make $35,000 and live in the middle of nowhere?’”

“Minorities – especially recent immigrants – go on to the hard science and/or business. Others who have been here a bit longer go to the social sciences and end up with policy jobs in the government or in a think tank.”

The grad school I attend has as many blacks as whites in it, so from experience i say your wrong here. This also goes to the diversity one, bc there is more diversity lectures here then I have ever seen anywhere else, run by the african american community. Sorry, I just think all good human beings care about diversity.

Also, this website should be called: Stuff Young Adult trendy hipster kids like. I struggle to accept many of things things as just white stereotypes

Haha! You didn’t say Linguistics! Now I can get my PhD in peace… And by the way, I actually got a school to pay for me to get this PhD, so I consider that an achievement. If you’re not going to get paid to get the degree, what’s the point? That’s when you know they don’t actually want you there.

This site is fantastically hilarious! This all describes me and my friends and family to a T. That should be sad, but it brings me much amusement regardless.

An MBA is not a real graduate degree conferring a lot of real knowledge or technical ability. It’s an expensive signaling mechanism. I presume they discussed those in the context of the economics courses you had to take.

Enjoy this shit for what it’s worth. Most of us don’t have any forum in which we can address questions of race and identity with the kind of honesty (and potential for abuse) that comes with anonymity.

Some facts:

Starting political scientists professors at research universities can expect to make anywhere from 60-85K. Ivy League schools and other similarly financially-situated can afford to pay more, and do. Economists can expect to make a little more than that, because frankly economic research is harder. Sociologists a little bit less. Hard sciences make more, and obviously have much larger opportunities in the private sector.

Sure, that’s not lawyer and doctor money, but it also means not spending time with lawyers and doctors. Isn’t that practically worth paying for?

So what about if you go to Europe and obtain your Masters degree there? does that give you more brownie points, or is it considered inferior because you did your MA there, instead of just doing the usual semester abroad?

European graduate degrees are not considered as rigorous as those conferred by (the better) universities in the United States. At least PhDs are not. Because although we Americans pay lip service to diversity, we have to retain our posture of hegemony.

I always thought of those masters from the Sorbonne or London School of Economics as simply a way to extend the study abroad experience well into one’s 20s.

Hmm, wow, I wasn’t born Caucasian, but since I seem to fit the tab for almost all the posts here, DOES THAT MAKE ME WHITE?

Wow, thanks for enlightening me, ‘Stuff White People Like’! I didn’t know association with things like Grad School and plays makes me white! How very not-racist, and how satirical! I’m breaking out into paroxysms of laughter, really!

Why no funnies about nascar, big old trucks, hummers, country music, and jesus freaks?

I guess, red necks aren’t true white people because they are not a step forward, but more of a step backward in white evolution, lawls.”

Exactly, this blog doesn’t seem to be “satirizing” any negative aspects of “white people,” only exalting a incredibly thin margin of a certain type of people, reinforcing ideas of white supremacy and pointing out flaws in other ethnic minorites, because oh, ALL MINORITIES SHOULD STRIVE TO BE LIKE WHITE PEOPLE, because WHITES ARE SUPERIOR, and this blog isn’t racist at all, it’s “funny” and “satirical”!

Really, I think the fact so many people can relate to what you wrote in #81 is because many of us are trapped in this feel-good-now directionless wanderings. Maybe the current economic downturn will give the new generation an urgent sense of direction 🙂

There are so many sad people on here, who feel smuggly superior that they earn more money that people who earn PhDs… if money is the measure of a man — you win! As for me, I spent years making a bunch of money and working a piece of crap job to do it. Screw that — I’m going to do what I love (history).

I’m very happy to report I’ve just been accepted (got the letter today!) to the Univ of New Mexico Composition and Rhetoric PhD program … tuition paid with stipend 15K/year (I gotta “earn my keep” by teaching 2 classes a semester).

Lit jobs are hard to get, but the Composition/Rhetoric job market is booming.

I may not be rollin’ in the dough, and stressed out for the next 5 years, but I’m working toward a career that I love.

Is it just me or is this whole thing a sneaky way to overcome the inadequacies this person feels for being white? Do you wish you were black or something? Maybe you wish you had more culture? I don’t get it – if you aren’t white you’re being a racist, and if you are white you are extremely self deprecating.

wow, almost every single thing on this list pops up on that online TV series/blog “quarterlife” (from the makers of “My So-Called Life” and “Thirtysomething”). a friend of mine (white) told me (black) about it last week and i checked out several of the mini-episodes and 1) all/most of the characters are white 2) all were in film school, wannabe actors, or wannabe writers 3) all own Macs 4) all love to blog 5) all love Michel Gondry (they even referenced the White Stripes “All About a Girl” video in one of the scenes for christssakes!) 5) all love to wear tshirts 6) one even prided himself on “not watching much TV” b/c too busy with political rallies and not showering, etc….this is no coincidence. i must ask the creators of this site: are you copping most of your material from “quarterlife”?? admit it!

Genius! The only thing that could be more hilarious than the entry is the fact that so many commenters are offended. Please offend them MORE! They deserve it for taking themselves too seriously and not getting the joke. Mouth-breathing troglodytes!

Um, right because nobody could benefit from any of our discoveries or theories…so, ‘Here’s to mediocrity!’? Also, consider that some of us may be quite passionate about our subjects, not to prove anything, but just because we want to know more about them, and have the money to learn.

I really don’t think most humanities grad students think they are smarter than everyone else. There are some who do not know how to talk about anything else besides Derrida and Lacan but that is often an indication of a combination of poor social skills and an inherent inferiorit complex.

I am certainly not offended by this post and find some of it quite funny, and I identify with some of it myself. But what I find troubling is all of the grad students from the sciences who have commented on the superiority of their degrees, and how much harder they work, smarter they are, etc. I agree with the premise that most undergraduate courses for science majors are harder than most undergraduate course in the humanities and arts. However, undergraduate, especially general education, courses in the humanities do not have very much to do with the things that many graduate students in the humanities study. I don’t want to get into a competition into who is smarter or who works harder. I think that the sciences obviously contribute many valuable things to our society. What I do not understand is why some science students who have posted on this blog have to demean the hard work of others. This strikes me as particularly mean-spirited because a graduate degree in the sciences is so much more valued in society, and Ph.Ds in those fields stand to make much more money than those of us in the humanities, and even their stipends are often twice as much more than those in the humanities. I am not pleading victim here. There are reasons I chose to go into the humanities, I just do not see why there is all this vitriol against grad students in the humanities. A clever joke, like the original post is all good fun, but I for one don’t think I am better or smarter than anyone else because I have read some obscure texts. I like what I do, and think it has value. I recognize it is a somewhat absurd and funny life-style but there is no good reason to say whatever someone chooses to devote their life to, whether it is being a dump-truck driver, a high-school teacher, a biochemist, or an English professor.

In response to post 39, the word “doctor” comes from the Latin “docere” which means “teach,” so many PhDs (who are often college professors) have just as much if not more of a right to the title doctor as a medical doctor.

This is a sad portrayal of white people. Most of the white people that I know are uneducated, watch sports constantly and could not give less of a fuck about the things I do in graduate school (I am ostensibly “white,” although part Native American). What you are really describing is upper class whites, which are definitely not the masses of white people in America. Just go outside of the cities and yuppie enclaves, and you will meet what you would consider “abnormal white people.” Or go someplace like Cal, which boasts more Asians than “white people.”

I work my ass off to go to Grad school, and still hold a full time job in the “real world.” Not all of us have to “claim” we were poor. I don’t think the author of this piece knows what “authentic white people” are. They are not all middle/upper class with a book up their ass, just as much as black people are not all poor and urban.

… since when is philosophy an ‘art’? i will admit that there is some material that gets categorized as ‘philosophy’ that is complete and utter bullshit, but to throw out the whole discipline as unchallenging. (ok, let’s be honest, what i have in mind is continental philosophy). in the interest of full discloser, i am a grad student in philosophy but i can tell you that a number of people in the hard sciences (no pun intended) have sat in on some of my seminars, and they struggled through the material as much as anyone else.

… i’ve also had philosophy professors who were more than well equipped to teach college level mathematics, and science courses, but they stuck with philosophy because they found it to be the most challenging, and rewarding.

What an interesting range of responses. First, the Arts degree was the real “Dr.” — “Dr.” of Medicine was the add-on… We had the name first, and we’ll have it last. No disrespect to Medical Doctors or folks in Business, but only someone with a severely limited education attacks another field about which s/he knows nothing in order to feel more important. As for Sciences, useless esoterica is definitely not the sole property of the Arts! What most of the silly posters who refer to the Sciences mean is “Applied Science” or “Engineering” — their vitriol would fit the real Sciences just as well as it first the Arts, which is to say it would only fit it naively…

The sad thing is the contrast; I regularly teach Business students and Engineers, and I began in the Sciences (I can count AND spell). A real Arts degree and a real Arts course of studies is anything but easy. I see my Business students out drunk while my Arts students are in the library. Even in Business, the MBA is very rapidly losing its prestige. The hardest working students I’ve ever seen are in Music. Job pay means very little as well — we all get beaten by plumbers. Still, I’d rather have my job, even if it pays less.

But the truly sad thing is that we need more Arts PhDs to fill real jobs, and we’ve not produced enough for the past 20 years to meet those internal needs. So, we rely on immigration to fill enough positions, often creating a false competition through which we can have a false abundance of labour. After all, you only get a crap Arts course or simplistic expectations if the good PhDs got scooped by another school, right?

As for the racial element, has anyone looked around a North American university lately? Really… We’re now predominantly female and have a great racial and ethnic diversity — even more so in graduate school. I’m rather happy about that.

Still, this was very funny. Why do so many people expect a joke to be true? If this blog were true, it wouldn’t be nearly so funny, and the latter is certainly its aim.

Good spot on the Ellesmere Chaucer! And, if you are a PhD in the humanities with two references from other PhDs you can get your hands on the real thing out at the Huntington Library in California. Sorry, no MAs, MDs, MBAs, or JDs need apply.

After all this debate about who deserves the title “Herr Doktor Doktor,” hasn’t anyone been bright enough to look up the history of the term. Medicine, Law, and the Applied Sciences only got the right to use to use it long after the Humanities (Classics?) had created it…

Why do you think an MD is an MD and not a PhD or DPhil?

More than that, what drives us to hate anyone who is educated and articulate? I’d really like to be able to answer that one…

As for the MBA that gets so much hype in these comments, even the Business Schools think it’s silly now. It’s a fake degree that offer neither genuine intellectual development nor preparations for the workplace. It’s a status-marker that you purchase, like a car or implants.

What’s truly amazing for me is that I’ve never seen an immigrant or someone in a minority point to a person with an education and say “I’d never let my children learn as much as you.” So, what then is this blog satirizing? It’s obviously not the value of graduate school or education in general — it’s the idiotic cliques that bloom everywhere to create classes and privilege in the so-called democratic and egalitarian American society. Either that, or it’s an attempt to get enough readers to generate enough $$ to put the authors through graduate school…

It’s sad to hear so much railing against higher education in this blog. I hold 3 masters degrees, one from Yale, as well as a Bachelors and an Associates, and I value the education received from all of them.

BM,
University of Rochester, Eastman School of Music (1979)
MM, Yale University, School of Music (1981)
Associates in Theology,
a Dallas, TX Bible School (1984)
MS, Computer Science,
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (1992)
MBA
University of North Carolina at Charlotte (2005)

I agree completely that the correlation between the level of higher education and intelligence or earning power is weak at best. There are plenty of very smart people out there without college degrees, and there are also plenty of people without a full deck upstairs who hold multiple graduate degrees. And of course we can all think of people who are billionaires who don’t even complete one college degree.

That said, we should recognize that education is intended to improve our way of life, standard of living, and appreciation for the world and its offerings, but its efficacy depends entirely upon us. Without our active involvement and participation, it’s nothing more than a collection of dead letters and useless theories.

Abraham Lincoln, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, Mother Theresa, and Albert Einstein are only a few of the myriad examples of people who rose above the “common” folk who complained about their lot without making any effort to improve the lives of others. They succeeded where others failed because of their thirst for knowledge and their desire to find solutions to the needs of humanity, at any cost.

And, by the way, this has nothing to do with skin color. Have you ever heard of George Washington Carver?

574-I think you’re off base on the premise of the degree. Its not designed to hold prestige in social circles. Its more like a vocational degree with a strong signaling mechanism. For those in industry the signaling is either interpreted as a slight negative (non-MBA holder who is not sympathetic to MBAs), or a very strong positive (MBA holder or non-MBA holder who is sympathetic to MBAs).

And I disagree with the suggestion that arts or humanities majors work harder or have a harder courseload than business students. I think it is likely that a higher proportion of those students are introverted than the business students, hence not being “out getting drunk”. Depending on the niche in business, it can be a rigorous (ie: acctg, econ) or complete fluff (marketing).

The hardest working students I’ve seen are the engineers and accountants. The rare times you saw them out getting drunk they were always getting really, over the top drunk, because they had a punishing courseload. They also never had problems landing a job at graduation and generally kicked ass in MBA school. I always sought out these types for my study groups and did well.

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#577: Actually, the etymology was chronicled at length by several posters, notably in comment #114.

Rpost3’s original comment (#39) was, frankly, ridiculous. Although some fields of study may be more difficult than others, anyone who has received a Ph.D. has the legal and moral right to call himself “Doctor.” It is true that some newspaper stylebooks and usage guides, say that only M.D.s, not Ph.D.s in either humanities or sciences, should be referrred to as “Doctor” in writing, but Rpost3 doesn’t take that position. His (or her?) contention that there is some sort of tradition that sciences Ph.D.s are entitled to call themselves “Doctor,” but not humanities Ph.Ds, is unsupported by any tradition or usage guide that I am aware of. It’s either all Ph.D.s are doctors, or none are.

Also, I doubt that any first-class university would accept a 90-page double-spaced document as an acceptable dissertation.

Yes, the correlation between intelligence and education is tenuous (to some degree), but most programmes have admission standards…and, in most cases, the requirements get more stringent as one climbs the ladder…so it is not only simplistic to opine: ‘It is important to understand that a graduate degree does not make someone smart, so do not feel intimidated.’ it also seems to contradict the post about the ubiquitous ‘gifted child.’

White people are inherently snobs, and love to increase their snobbish standing. Graduate school is one way to do that. They can scoff at the lesser educated and at the same time claim to have even greater knowledge about what is best for poor people. Sometimes they can make more money so they can buy even more expensive sandwiches and take vacations to third world countries.

I’m glad someone mentioned this. Music students not only have to develop unique skillsets (ear training, sight-singing) and contend with rigorous academic courseloads (history, theory, and non-music courses/majors), but also have rehearsals and individual practice eating up the free time that their fellow students have the luxury of spending holed up in the library or passed out in a pile of empties.

Speaking of useless degrees, I do agree that musicology should be up there. Some among us are at least as prone to vomiting up trendy Foucaultisms as Lit students (although some of us do real scholarship, too).

And to those students of “real” subjects who found your arts electives to be bullshit–they probably were. I teach music electives for non-majors, and arts electives are often under significant pressure from university administration to give an average grade of “A,” which often means reducing the sophistication of materials by such a degree that a brain-damaged monkey would excel.

As for the tendency for Business/Management/Education students to fail these courses regardless…I can only marvel.

tho there are a million billion people who go to grad school to feel self-important, i think i fall under the category of those who are simply unable to cope with office life. i don’t think that makes me better — it definitely means i’m weaker — but it’s enough to push me through six extra years of school.

The smartest guy I knew in grad school came out of St. John’s, had his notes on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in the margins of his Greek edition *in Greek* and, immediately following his MA, moved back to San Fran to become a finishing carpenter.

(So, like, hey, is that *you* Greg??)

Personally, I was somehow able to get the PhD, move to the middle of nowhere to teach post-globalized, disenfranchised, blue collar kids to read Plato, worship Andy Warhol, and drop the word “semiotics” into casual conversations over the beer bong, and STILL be able to claim that a “PhD is a testament to perseverance, not intelligence.”

I got my MFA last year. In addition to being riddled with three years of loans (and preventing me from getting a condo–oops, I meant “co-op”), I’m making $35,000 less than what I was making before I went to graduate school.

I am sad to hear people saying that English and American History are as ‘useless’ as grad school education (or education for that matter). No wonder people do not want to become teachers anymore, and kids care so little for education to the point that Newsweek called the US a ‘drop out’ nation. People who still chose a career in Education is not because of the money. But guess what? If money and power are the things at stake here, do you know what percentage of US companies are foreigned-owned? and what percentage of foreigners are in grad schools? (not only in the Humanities but also in the Sciences). So, guess who is actually doing the thinking in the US while some disregard the usefulness of being articulate or of knowing who we are?

Right, cause, hey. The only important thing in life is how much you’re getting paid, your job and your relative self-worth as demonstrated by how much you own. Knowledge and the progression of humanity through that knowledge, that isn’t what’s important. It’s all about money, baby!

I could reference Derrida or Zizek in this comment, but I don’t need to know that I’m smarter. I’m one of the few Mexican-Americans to have gone to grad school in the humanities (and not in Chicano Studies). If that makes me white, that’s quite alright, cause I know that, everywhere I go, I’m surrounded by retards! Makes me want to go to Canada!

If all you people with degrees in the humanities are so smart, how come y’all don’t get the point of this blog? It is to skewer the most privileged members of society! NASCAR, trailer parks, moon pies & R.C. Cola have been done to death. Almost no one ever attempts to skewer the upper middle class–and apparently the upper middle class can’t take it! You want the NASCAR people skewered yet again, not the upper middles. That’s one of the funniest things about white people — at least upper middles — they’re always appalled and aghast if anyone should be so bold as to give them a turn getting ridiculed.

I hope this blog makes at least one upper middle class pompous person think twice before name-dropping poets and foods that are supposed to be “obscure” into social conversation in that smug tone they love to adopt, or taking that chilly “Oh. Like most people, you prefer a linear plotline. I find that boring.” tone.

If people like that are never skewered, how are they supposed to know they’re annoying? They don’t know they’re annoying, and that’s what’s so annoying about them.

Actually literature can help solve this great world problem. I am sorry this poem is not more obscure but it’s “To a Louse” by Robert Burns. “…to see ourselves as others see us.” A nicely dressed lady in church had a louse crawling out from under her bonnet. The poet notices this and ruminates on how pompous the lady is and doesn’t know her **** stinks like everyone else’s.

One more thing: I have a master’s in linguistics and an MBA. The MBA wasn’t useless after all. I had several classes in organizational behavior that filled in the blanks on things nerds (both the science type nerd and the obscure literature type nerd) don’t know about how not to step on people’s toes in the workplace. Those classes have been invaluable. I don’t know if every MBA takes organizational behavior but those classes taught me not to do certain things that p*ss off co-workers and cause the knives to be out when layoff time comes.

This article is so true–as a black male in a phd, few things can revoke your “black status” faster than telling people you are in a Ph.D. program.

It’s the fastest game killer I’ve ever seen, and thats true when telling it to white people, asians, blacks, etc.

For that reason, I’m going to business school, I need to make money and find a career worth my time.

Living in a small town, being the next “academic” to make only 35k is not only sexual suicide, but a life of nonstop poverty. And they wonder why schools have a hard time finding more people of color to be future professors–you get reamed from all directions trying to be a full-time academic student, and you get no romantic or financial or social benefits when you do so.

I’m being bugged by professors to be the next “cornel west” or
the next future tenured black professor—and all I’m offered are fellowships at places in no-name town. Places that are in single-guy friendly places are like 30k to live in SAN FRANCISCO.

What black person (esp. one from a lower-income background and family) would ever sign up for that? Not many, that’s for sure.

Anyone who thinks Ph.D.s in philosophy aren’t entitled to call themselves “doctor” ought to ask why experts in so many other disciplines are allowed to call themselves “doctors of philosophy,” i.e., Ph.D.s.

If I had a kid I would tell him to major in math or sciences at State U. IF that was not his/her gig, they could do the liberal arts major at state u. (Why pay 30K more per year for something that likely won’t open that many more doors for you.)

But they sure as shit better pass the bar in a tough state….

Arts degrees tend to be good for one thing: writing a decent sentence. Most writing from people applying for jobs is hideous. No guarantee that college will make you a better writer, but it should.

Grad school is just a way to kill a year or two while extending the fun of college.

GAR I know who I am and where I’m from a lot better than you. This little experiment we call the US of A is an age of enlightenment experiment that isn’t designed to last for the long haul. I’m not blinded by simplistic nationalistic paradigms, I am loyal to my people (white people of similar ideas).

I am learned in ancient European history, especially Roman and Byzantine and I can tell you that the parallels today between the current US and the western half of the empire are startling.

But keep thinking that all Americans are “created equal” and that the “US is the Best” and adorn your vehicle with suitable bumper stickers. Civilization and the world didn’t begin in 1492 or 1776 and it will continue far beyond this nation-state.

American history is useless as a grad school course of study as its taking a very narrow look at a particular time period. In the grand scheme of things Paul Revere’s light signalling isn’t that significant.

The primary definition of doctor is “teacher.” It comes from the Middle English “doctour” which also meant “teacher.” A “doctor” of the American “I’m going to the doctor” sort is, formally speaking, a physician.

it is true. i am going to have TWO masters degrees…and i know not a whole lot more then i knew before. and whatever more i do know i am pretty sure i gained from life experience. but, hey, debt is a cool thing.

Too funny! I almost died laughing when a friend posted this on my facebook–not only because I’m finishing my M.A. in creative writing (sad, I know) but also because I’m the one in the blue sweater in the photo he posted. Scary! I had sort of hoped my 15 minutes wouldn’t be humiliating.

When my sister called to tell (warn) me about the photo, I said, “Oh yeah, I heard an interview with that guy on NPR.” Sooo white!

it’s easy to tear down humanities studies as wasting their time learning something that has little relevance to the “real world” if you’re to compare them to people studying science or medicine. but most educated people i know spend all of their time sitting behind a desk and i can’t see how that is any more relevant to the real world or beneficial to society then studying history or literature.

i’d rather have a degree in history or philosophy then one in business!

“As for the MBA that gets so much hype in these comments, even the Business Schools think it’s silly now. It’s a fake degree that offer neither genuine intellectual development nor preparations for the workplace.”

And yet, so many employers seem intent on hiring us. I guess they are all “drinking the Kool-Aid” as well? Calling an MBA a “fake degree” only sounds like the bitter rantings of someone who is regretting their own career path. Just an FYI.

You write “By the time they graduate (or a year or two afterwards), white people realize that they will need an edge to succeed in the cut-throat world of modern white society.

That edge is graduate school.”

Now that is really, really, incredibly, self-aggrandizing to the max. I wonder if you realize what it means to succeed, or else you define society in the only terms you can understand.

Ok Ok that’s the downside. The upside is that you express drive and courage that’s required to succeed whether you finish graduate school with a PhD or take 3 classes in underwater basket-weaving as a JC.

Education is a wonderful thing but the greatest success is a person fully alive and aware.

Gosh you sure nailed it what a dumbass I was for going to college. I could have been watching MMA and tricking out my sweet honda civic. Damn Im dumb, now that I make more money than all of my friends I just think it was a waste having to sit through those classes “learning stuff” that I now see as completely useless. I mean who wants to talk about meaningless things like politics or art when I could be sucking down a coors light and driving my sweet atv. Thanks you all have truly changed my life.

A new topic on this blog should be “White people hating other white people for going to college”. Or “White people love to hate themselves”.

Well, of the white “yuppy” subcategory the MBA is the top tier. You left that out. It our hope at playign goft with other MBAs while we look down on other people who don’t have them and work their lives away.

j/k

I have an MBA and I think it offers so much practical information for use in general life with investments and such that most people are to dumb to understand or care to understand (debt America). The fact that you know crap about music or humanities is irrelevant. Business people control the world.

I’m not going to lie though, one of the reasons I got it was for the status.

Makes me glad that I had postmodernism and literary theory, dropped humanities for science and don’t introduce myself as a scientist with an advanced degree. Plus, the only reason I got into science is because I was “cool” in high school and wanted to learn about drugs.

You should probably add in the fact that when white people DO actually graduate from graduate school, they frequently refer to their area of study/specialty school as “J-School” (Journalism School) or “B-School” (Business School), etc. Ex.: “Dude, when we graduated B-school, we threw a money-themed party.”

They will also sometimes call beer pong “Beirut” to sound more sophisticated and so that people will ask what “Beirut” is.

AND (this is my last one I swear) when they actually do get their Master’s, they will acquire a low-paying job because, let’s face it, a graduate degree generally doesn’t get you any more money, but three months after acquiring said job will constantly complain that “paying off my J-school loans is kicking my ass.”

Oh, and @ urban thought, you get paid while you’re in grad school– in Humanities you generally make a living wage or more (~$20k) plus tuition, fees, and great health benefits, so it won’t necessarily put you in debt. It’s a pretty good gig, really.

As a former Comp Lit student, all I can say in our (academics’) defense is that some of us would rather get paid to read books and sleep late than to sit in a cubicle answering phones and creating spreadsheets. Unfortunately, actually getting a job in academia is a lot harder than getting a job in a cubicle, pays less, and ordinarily entails moving to the middle of nowhere and being pretentious and defensive.

I’d complain about this blog and comments if I could find a flaw but alas it’s clear concise and thoughtful and the green, yellow and red peppers in the logo look great.

The comments are first rate excepting comment #’s 136, 144, 340

my MBA was very informative but couldn’t hold a candle to my undergraduate degree and studies in Psychology (just the pure science and methods have been used many times and my life) or the degree in Computer Science that taught unflinching logic.

It’s not a white thing (though I am white) it’s an elitist thing we are talking about, but then ignorance IS bliss

white americans go to grad school, especially in the humanities, because they want to avoid growing up and getting a real life for a few more years. they enjoy being poor, sharing a flat with 2 other grad students and more importantly, they get to COMPLAIN…

there are other great reasons for going to grad school such as being in love with science, nature, math, technology… ( I suppose this “love” can apply to humanities fields too but i don’t get those so can’t comment)

there are no “good” reasons for graduate school, all these guys are in denial. it’s okay, guys, I’ve been there, and for you normal ones, acknowledgment is the first step to recovery.

for those of you who continue to insist that graduate school has “meaning” and “purpose” and that your field is not “useless,” that grad school is not a purely selfish endeavor, well, you belong in graduate school, if for no other reason than the real world would not accept you for your disastrous blend of arrogance and ignorance anyway.

For the record, graduate school in Science is not worthless. You don’t even come close in undergraduate to learning what you need to know to get anywhere in real world applications of that field. I plan to go into intellectual property law in biochemistry, and those with just undergraduate degrees can hardly keep on a conversation.

Second – this post is mostly true. I personally know many white people who would orgasm at the sight of a “perfect” resume with perfect schools and honors, much more easily than observing someone physically perfect. Skepticism as their religion, they would assume such a person who looks that good could never be that accomplished. Now, if someone looked like a model, and had that resume, maybe these white people would be content. But I highly doubt it ~ there’s always a flaw to keep happy to bitch about.

I’m in law school (because I want to be an attorney) and I am surrounded by white people who chose to come to law school to defer entering the “real world”. Who the hell does that? I’d rather pay someone $1000 per credit hour to avoid paying federal income taxes on my paycheck? Yep, real smart.

#652 – So, you plan to go into intellectual property law in biochem, does this mean that you only have an undergrad science degree and are planning to go further? Or do you have a graduate degree an are going to also go to professional school? If you just have an undergraduate degree, then how can you possibly comment that “those with just undergraduate degrees can hardly keep on a conversation”?

I call total bullshit on that. I have an advanced degree in biochem, but to say that those with only undergrad degrees can’t carry on a conversation (in what, you don’t specify) comes across as complete bullshit.

This one hits too close to home. You missed of the most useless degrees. Music Composition. Yes, I did this. I was convinced I was going to get a bachelors, masters and doctorate in Music Composition. I was going to be a professor in a small town where I would be a truly superior human being. Luckily, before I graduated (or unfortunately -depends on your perspective) I dropped out due to the exact realization in the article. I’m going to make HOW LITTLE money? I would make more money as a bartender (my “real” job while in college) so I went back to work and started a band.

Starting a band should probably be on this blog.

Thanks, this is one of my favorite blogs. I don’t care if the author is purple or green, this is brilliant observation.

“The second path involves becoming a professor, moving to a small town and telling everyone how they are awful and uncultured.”

BINGO. I live in a small college town and THIS is the complaint of all complaints! What did you expect?!! You earned both your MFA or MA (it’s always one of these) and/or your doctorate from some school on the west coast or northeast YET you somehow you expected that you’d find the “culture” of a big city by applying for AND accepting a teaching position in rural, southeast Georgia. Get a grip on life and stop whining…NEXT.

Millions of Americans have recently checked out the blog Stuff White People Like, a smart, running list of that which signifies white culture. Posts have included “Threatening to Move to Canada,” “Standing Still at Concerts,” “Knowing what’s best for poor people” and “expensive sandwiches.”

From the post on Graduate School, a taste of the site’s voice:

“Being in graduate school satisfies many white requirements for happiness. They can believe they are helping the world, complain that the government/university doesn’t support them enough, claim they are poor, feel as though are getting smarter, act superior to other people, enjoy perpetual three day weekends, and sleep in every day of the week!”

Clearly, it was only a matter of time before the format of listing elements of a given culture was copied.

Cynical, but absolutely accurate. From your description, I am at the top of this sorry heap: white, with degrees from Columbia, Cambridge and Princeton in English and Comparative Literature, a professor at a state university in a sleepy, small town, overeducated and underpaid. The prestige has dulled, Zizek and Lacan annoy, and all that is left is an abiding interest in reading, writing and talking about ideas. But that is enough and is as it should be. Culture, despite all the posing and self-aggrandizement along the way, has actually turned out to be something valuable in itself, and more importantly, enjoyable.

The people of Afghanistan would be immeasurably better off if the white people of the world would stop bombing them and trying to make up for it by pretending to care about their welfare.”

PLEASE RE-READ MY POST. YOUR POINT IS VALID…WE WOULD ALL BE BETTER OFF, HOWEVER, IF WE COULD LAUGH AT OURSELVES INSTEAD OF ATTACKING OTHERS FOR REASONS WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND OR BASELESS ARGUMENTS WE HAVE NOT DONE ANY RESEARCH INTO. I checked my paypal account and you did not order my book. You should not therefore be critiquing my statement as it is out of context. I am not throwing stones at Afghanistans without reason. In case you have not heard there is a man claiming to live in the caves (rough translation of troglodyte) there who takes credit for his numerous attempts to kill Americans and debilitate our civilization that provides is with the rights to free speech…even if it is online blogs of useless knowledge. PLEASE buy my book just so you can really have something to complain to me about…unless you are just disgruntled about having to pay off your student loans and can’t afford my book, or genuinely dislike learning so much you fear reading anything new because you might have to formulate a new opinion. If you read my book and dislike what I wrote, you can email whatever feedback you’d like. Maybe you’ll like it but not want to admit it because that would mean everyone on this site would have to suspend their sarcasm or self deprication and we all know it is much easier to play Monday morning quarterback. If we could not laugh or know joy by being able to appreciate others for bringing laughter or inspiration into our lives, no amount of college degrees or monetary gain would be worth anything.

For the record, this was my original post:

416 essentially amused
Don’t know if the article was funnier than some of the postings but OMG, too funny. Of course we need to laugh at ourselves for caring so much about rhetoric and theory but without higher thinking and/or appreciation of ideas, art, concepts humanity would still be in Cromagnon, troglodyte states…anyone ever heard of a place called Afghanistan?

But if you like the circular conversations about how seemingly useless these advanced thoughts (some might call enlightenment) are you’ll love the book Hung Jury, available online online at http://www.EssentialArt.org by clicking on Essential Literature then “Buy A Book.”

I like 665’s post. I checked the GRE, and according to the Princeton Review,

“Each of the multiple-choice sections is scored on a scale of 200 to 800. The average scores for the GRE are about 470 for Verbal and 570 for Quantitative.”

So, I suppose (if the sections reflect equivalent levels of accomplishment) writing is more difficult than math. Or, at the very least, Americans taking the GRE are less accomplished in their language skills than they are in math. I wonder if that has changed over time… Are Americans taking the GRE getting better or worse at things like reading, talking, or writing? Hmm.

On the bright side, IQ continues to increase year after year, but this is skewed because we also live our lives and educate our young in ways that increasingly value the skills an IQ test evaluates — we decreasingly value the many other skills an IQ test does not examine, so it seems that we’re simply getting better at a few particular tasks because we’re training for them.

I am, however, increasingly troubled by the “white people” part of this. It’s obviously meant in good fun, but some of the postings here seem quite sincere in repeating it. This satire only works on stereotypes, and it seems likely that a society with poor skills for things like articulate communication is not likely to remedy stereotypic thinking any time soon.

At any rate, I rather like people at parties who scored well on the GRE’s language assessment. They tell funnier stories than those who can count lowest on “99 bottles of beer on the wall”… I wonder if the music students can sing it in harmony? I wonder too if anyone who accuses the music grad students of pretentiousness has ever heard Purcell’s catches…

Oh, and I’m not a graduate student. By these standards, I don’t think I qualify as white either.

I am a white person and the hardest thing for me to do is explain to my mid/late twentysomething peers that:
a. i did not go to college
b. i henceforth did not go to graduate school
c. i am a self employed freelance photographer and filmmaker
d. I am a republican

It boggles their minds. No graduate school? Professional, self employed artist? Republican? How can this be? No graduate school? No COLLEGE?

They do celebrate graduate school. You should amend this post to talk about how much white twentysomethings like using the phrase, “I have a passion for learning!” I am constantly faced with those who feel the need to explain to me that, if they could, they would stay in school for the rest of their lives.

At my school, during the Commencement exercises, the only people who get their names stated or get to stand and walk across the stage in the ceremony are the PhDs. The new MDs sit in the bleachers and watch them do so.

This is true for all PhD, regardless of the discipine. Why? Because MDs are trained to “do” and PhDs are trained to “think.”

Also, the general degree is the Doctor of Philosophy. So a chemist and sociologist with PhDs have the same degree with different specializations. You can’t call one a doctor and not the other.

I have an undergrad degree in Computer Science and Spatial Analysis/GIS (evidentally this degree will gain me credibility in this posting?)

Im now finishing a Ph.D. in Geography….and I have come to realize that this is the ULTIMATE white person degree. While I avoid the one-upsmanship most grad students relish when it comes to art/film/literature, I am able to make all white people feel inadequate with my vast, often trivial geography knowledge.

What, you can’t find Andorra on a map? You don’t know the primary mountain range in Slovakia?

This post hit pretty close to home aside from the whole fine arts stuff…luckily geographers retain just enough science credibility to avoid being lumped in with the others (I hope?)

When I finished college in 2004, I was one of the few white people who didn’t go straight into grad school. Instead I went to my first corporate media job. My parents told me right after my graduation ceremony that they were really proud that I was doing something “different” compared to the rest of my peers. Since when is going straight to work after four years of college considered different? I like the idea of grad school like a lot of my peers, but spending that much money on something that probably won’t further my career isn’t worth it. I’d do it if I were rich and had nothing better to do but learn, but I believe you learn something new everyday…so I just go the library LOL.

You are so right on with all of your posts. I’m a middle class,college educated, country boy, who can’t stand the practices of many white people. We do all know that these are just generalizations which also do not apply to many white people, but there is so much truth to these posts.

It seems like the majority of comments here are from graduate students themselves, often in the humanities, who agree that because what they do doesn’t (ostensibly/immediately) generate profits for the capitalist class, it has no value.

My thoughts divide along two main themes:

1. This reflects the fact that even supposed cultural critics have shamelessly capitulated to free market ideology i.e. If it doesn’t generate profits for shareholders somewhere, then it has no demonstrable value.

2. This reflects the extent to which academia (at least in the humanities) has indeed veered towards obscurantism and irrelevance.

Both are true; in fact they are the same. I don’t think this is an accident, personally, but then, I’m a Marxist. On related note, I found a recent episode of the radio show Against the Grain particularly enlightening: http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=24987 I haven’t yet read Timothy Brennan’s book, Wars of Position, but I am looking forward to it. Brennan lays out how right-wing poststructualist theories came to prominence in the academy and persuaded us to give up the fight for democracy, equality, and class struggle in favor of sexy but facile concepts like “agency” and “transgression.” We gave up challenging the system in favor of wallowing in an exalted marginality, allowing ideas to become elite commodities.

We attack the system, but only in rhetoric, and never make a real claim to power. Zizek himself, who has come up so often here, took up this issue recently at the Left Forum in New York, where he engaged the pathetic stance of the post-68 left: “RESIST, ATTACK, UNDERMINE”

And so now we find ourselves hollow and dissatisfied with our talismans of rebellion, our consumer revolutions, unable for all our arcane posturing to connect any of it to the real world of events and consequences. We despise ourselves for inhabiting these sacred texts, “safe spaces,” utopias of taste–the margins from which we smugly and ineffectually “resist.” Deep down, we know how meaningless it is, more meaningless, we suspect, than nakedly participating in the market economy, because we pretend to do otherwise.

And so we turn on ourselves and disparage the very premise of higher education, at a time when Americans are more ignorant than ever, and when economic inequality, at home and abroad, is greater than ever before in world history. At a time when capitalism appears poised to actually destroy the Earth beyond habitation. In my opinion, these problems call for MORE inquiry, not less.

If I had to write a blog about what white people like, here is a list I would start with:

1. making fun of anyone who actually cares about anything, and in particular those who have the folly to attempt to change things
2. deriding anything that doesn’t generate profits for the capitalist class
3. feeling so guilty about your own whiteness that you can’t even fathom your own oppression, or see that you have an actual stake in the world
4. being easily bribed by individual consumer “empowerment” and intellectual flattery (I understand Deleuze!) and willing to sell out your responsibility to humanity to become a theory magician
5. becoming mired in endless relativism, and increasingly unable to say ANYTHING with certainty
6. becoming so convinced of your own powerlessness that you are unable to see just how much power you actually hold

In my humble opinion, the antidote to this malaise is a good dose of Karl Marx, spiced with a little Jameson and David Harvey. And some Thomas Frank as a digestif, if you still believe that “latte liberal” bullshit.

Really people, if the theory in which we have so long taken refuge from the world is no longer relevant or helpful to us, and if the very enterprise of intellectual work seems worthless, then let’s read (and write!) stuff that does us some good. And if the market structure of academia makes it so that there are no tenure-track jobs left, then why not teach community college, or even high school? If those jobs don’t pay enough, then let’s try to change that. If our school systems are broken, let’s try to fix them. And while we’re at it, let’s change some other things…

I have four graduate degrees. Law being one of them. Education is something that nobody can take away from you. Wealth can be lost, but not the letters behind the name. Am I an elitist? Perhaps. But not a liberal elitist.

Probably people who make it through Grad school seem to have read a lot because they have time. Not much time to peruse Lacan at fireside or wander treelined streets in goofy clothes when your boss is yelling at you to get those burgers flipped, sell more insurance, or work 70 hours a week to develop some new tech gadget that will just end up making everyone have less free time and suckier lives. Professors might complain, but they do it so people don’t realize that generally they teach 6-9 hours a week and spend the rest of their time doing stuff that actually interests them. You don’t get rich but if you were obsessed with money you probably didn’t really groove with philosophy or lit anyway. When your girlfriend gets bored and leaves you saying you spend all your time in the office or answering your bosses phonecalls, it will likely be because I spent half the day chatting her up in the coffee shop.

Why do underachievers feel the need to justify thier own mediocrity? It’s amazing how creative they can be when spewing off reasons as to why they have yet to accomplish anything academically noteable– “I could have gone but my calling was in acting… or music… or something just as socially acceptable so long as it has the kind of catchy label that will explain why I’ve wasted the last 9 months of my life serving people chicken fingers and margaritas.” That’s really par for the course though, isn’t it? Waste a little time here and there, then berate people who have actually accomplished something, that’s pretty much how it goes, tell me I’m wrong. I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say, “I could have done that.” Well, you didn’t, and that makes all the difference. Get over it. By the way, I received my MBA from Columbia at 23 and my starting salary was over $90K. You bet your ass I’m proud of that and if my existence diminishes your own sense of self-worth in some way, I have two words for you: grow up.

Just a suggestion…if you plan to leave a comment about how intelligent you are and/or how worthwhile your field of study is, you will look more intelligent and be taken more seriously if you can actually spell.

I just finished a masters in public administration and started on a Phd in political science. I sleep in every day and have four day weekends. Taxpayers foot the bill all the way around plus give me plenty to live on … mmwwahahahhah! I hate the phd program though and i’m dropping out. I was just gonna move back home and go back to building houses, which is what i’m good at and will probably end up doing anyway … but I”m gonna move to New York cause my asian girlfriend works up there right now. BTW I rode my bike to the deli today and had an expensive sandwich and I feel great about that … but it didn’t even touch the awsome food I was eating when I spent three months backpacking through New Zealand. I wore shorts today even though it was 50 degrees. I hate the fact that The Wire is over. It really was the best show on TV. I wrote this on an Apple ibook. I am so white. I think i’m gonna go pull a Highland Brewery Oatmeal Porter out of the fridge and relax.

I studied Secondary Education: Social Studies in my undergrad…..and am currently living in the Middle East teaching history to children of expatriates from around the globe….working on my master’s degree in History….and then wanting to pursue a PhD in European or Middle Eastern History so that I can teach at a university. How white am I!!!!!

Geez, will now after reading this blog I know why I’m getting my MBA…must be my overachieving white genes. At least I have a job. Too many new grads think that they will earn 50K right out of the chute. Get some experience!

I started out wanting to be a vet. My counselor talked me out of it and put me in dairy science. (experiment: let a cow smell garlic or peppermint 20 min. before you milk her. The milk tastes like garlic or peppermint. Conclusion: if your barn smells like cowshit… you got it… ) Then I transferred to landscape horticulture and got my bachelors in that.

Then I discovered that I wasn’t good with plants. They always died, and I forgot their names (I’m also not good with names, and these were in Latin) So I decided to work with kids at a preschool. I wasn’t good with them either. They didn’t die, but they cried alot.

Finally I decided I wanted to work with adults. I got my mastors in counseling at age 40. I like counseling, and so far I haven’t killed any people. (at least that I know of)

First I’d like to say that I found this article quite funny. The reason I found it was because I’m looking towards Grad school. I currently have a Technolgist diploma and an Engineering degree. I’ve worked a couple different full time jobs adding up to about 4 years of professional experience. Funny thing is my degree actually gave me a pay cut when I finished. So i asked myself why I would go back to University again to do Grad school because its clearly not the money. I do however have a lot of interest in actually researching and learning more about electrical engineering. Please tell me that getting a Master’s & Phd in this field is not a complete waste of time. There has to be some Grad programs that are useful and contribute to the greater good.

This is so true! In fact it is quite sad in some cases: many white people grow up in lives of such privilege that they do not learn the basics of supporting themselves. Grad school is a way of delaying the inevitable responsibilities of adulthood, under the guise of “finding one’s path.”

Do you actually believe, “3. feeling so guilty about your own whiteness that you can’t even fathom your own oppression, or see that you have an actual stake in the world” ???
You need help. You should also stop posting.

Dude, you forgot ‘library science’ from your list of grad degrees. There is no other grad degree that is really nothing but a union card that allows you to claim top berth on the superiority platform. Not only that, but you can barely eke out a living practicing it.

You forgot one important pinnacle of whiteness, at least for PhD students in the humanities: join a graduate student union, especially if it’s at an Ivy League school that funds you much better than any state school would. This allows you to: 1) pretend you are working-class; 2) shout slogans stolen from the civil rights movement; and 3) not do the work that would get you out of the financial hellhole that is graduate school.

Satire? What satire? The joke is on those of you who buy into such crude stereotypes, which have zilch to do with reality.

Frankly, some of you should be thankful that we impractical types are taking ourselves out of competition for higher-paying jobs in other fields. Because, believe or not, some of us are pretty damn good at math, and have reasoning skills that a lot of you seem to lack.

Really, don’t any of you feel ashamed at your own pettiness and insecurity?

i’m not white, but a graduate school-educated brownie and i simply MUST comment on this statement:

“At this point, they can feel superior to graduate school and say things like “A PhD is a testament to perseverance, not intelligence.” They can also impress their friends at parties by referencing Jacques Lacan or Slavoj Žižek in a conversation about American Idol.”

This is SO true and so hilarious. But pls add Michel Foucault (gay french writer/philosopher) to your list of abstruse writers/philosophers that whites LOVE to reference at parties and such. I cannot tell you the number of graduate school parties I have attended where one slightly tippled white after another has dropped his name in casual conversation about stuff like American Idol and/or Sanjaya.

Michel Foucault is especially a favorite of those whites who decide to pursue “Gay Studies” in college.

Engineering is one of the good fields to be in grad school for, although it can be hell if you are at a lower tier school (no funding, if there is funding its a crappy project, crappy equipment, etc, etc). Its probably not worth your time to get a PhD from Podunk State.

There is a very short list of jobs for good EE PhDs – professor, industrial research (IBM Watson, Intel, not too many others worth mentioning), or a start up company. If you just want to get a better job or more money at a place similar to what was available to you with a BS, then you will *usually* be better off with just a MEng or maybe an MS.

Funny. When I got through law school, I went on a binge where I insisted everyone call me Doctor. I figured if some hairy armpitted, mochachino swilling turd in a hemp shirt who majored in some bullshit like “Trans-Atlantic Gender Studies” and whose daddy wrote enough checks to get her through a phd program was going to be called Doctor, so should I. As far as I can tell, a good law school and the bar exam is roughly 50,000x more difficult to get out of than just about any social sciences degree. Med School is roughly 1,000,000x harder than that.

And I have no idea who Slavoj Žižek is, despite law school and 4 years in a very difficult undergrad International Relations program, and I’m not going to Wiki it. So fuck off.

You know I’m white…that’s really all I wanted to say. You know I’m white. And I wear MBT’s because they make me feel like a Masai tribesman and cost $249. My wife wears Uggs. Same reason, except she doesn’t feel like a Masai tribesman (I think).

The best thing you can do if someone mentions a critical theorist is trying to avoid throwing up, and to flee as swiftly as possible. They are Satan’s spawn.

I can’t believe some of the comments, as the above characterization has me and my white grad colleagues down. I study an obscure part of the world and love it, and I’m grateful every single day I don’t have to work a standard office job. Even if I only make 10 grand before taxes. What I do isn’t important in the least (except in my silly fantasy world), but completely self-indulgent.

I’m having a bit of trouble understanding what exactly your criticism of non-natural-science schooling amounts to. In various postings, you’ve shifted from criticizing graduate programs in these fields on the basis of the fact that they (i) require little intelligence, (ii) require little work, and (iii) have few practical consequences—or, at least, have fewer practical consequences than the work in other fields. Which is your basis for criticism—all, or merely some, of these? If only some, which? If your beef is along the lines of (i) or (ii), then you’re just factually mistaken. (Hopefully you’re not just fallaciously generalizing from what you experienced in a handful of undergraduate humanities courses to a characterization of what things are like in strong humanities graduate programs.) Test your claim empirically: audit a few of the seminars reputed to be among the more difficult in, say, a top philosophy graduate program. Work through all the readings, take the exams, write the papers, etc. I’m confident you’ll change your tune. Now, if your chief issue is (iii), that’s different. I don’t think you’ll get much protest over the claim that work in the natural sciences, by and large, has more practical consequences than work in the humanities and social sciences. But unlike (i) and (ii) above, it’s not at all clear that this disparages the value of the latter. Some argument is needed for that conclusion. Where is that argument?

Actually, forgoing the comma before the last item in a list is grammatically perfectly acceptable. In America, though, it’s custom to include it. Please see my favorite grammar book for white people, “Eats, Shoots and Leaves.”

There are so many reasons to have a graduate degree, but they don’t make a person superior.. some jobs require that you have one. So what? Sure it’s awful when an arrogant twat who happens to have one uses it to justify an obnoxious superiority complex, but most people who go to graduate school are pursuing something they’re interested in and want to study in more depth, or need to have the degree to fulfill a dream and become a professor or other profession that requires extended study. It’s obviously not something everyone is or should be interested in doing (definitely not for me) but have some respect for your fellow human beings! no offense, but it really makes you look like assholes when you spew so much hatred..

The more I read this blog, the more I think it’s intentionally hurtful. It feels like part of this ugly movement building in our culture ever since the early 90’s that sees anything idealistic, caring, or inspired as something to tear down in the name of me-first, I’m so “Vegas” cool individual glory.

I’d love to see it as satire, but really it’s just making fun of an easy target. Wow, laughing at rich white liberals… THAT’S never been done before!

But at the same time that the blog makes fun of (what used to be called “yuppie”) “white” culture, doesn’t it deconstruct the idea that any race likes any one particular thing? Japanese people and Asian men have a history of liking, um, sushi and Asian women, for example. The post on organic food deconstructs the idea of “organic” vs. other veggies. If it’s insulting maybe you should think about why you like what you like, but at the end of the day, just have a laugh. Then again, “white guilt” is also something white people like.

“act like they’re smarter than physicians”….
“Doctors go to medical school or have a PhD in a science field. In other words, they are smart enough and worked hard enough to earn the title “Doctor.”….
I work at a medical school, and this guy is definitely a doctor. Someone this arrogant has to be a doctor, there’s just no other explanation.

“When people say “I have a doctor’s appointment,” they’re talking about the smart, hard-working people ”
haha…. I work at a medical school. A good amount of the people here are well born and not very bright. they have their head in the clouds.

In a freak accident today on the strip of Harvard, Professor Stephen Walt was crushed to death under a Caterpillar tractor. The incident happened in front of the Kennedy Government Center. A school spokesperson said the land was being cleared for new law student settlements. The Dozer operater, A. Dershowitz, was on loan to The Harvard Defense Forces from another department when the incident occurred. Dershowitz said he did not see Walt jumping up and down in a red vest in front of the tractor nor did he hear his screams of agony.

doctor
c.1303, “Church father,” from O.Fr. doctour, from M.L. doctor “religious teacher, adviser, scholar,” from L. doctor “teacher,” from doct- stem of docere “to show, teach,” originally “make to appear right,” causative of decere “be seemly, fitting” (see decent). Familiar form doc first recorded c.1850. Meaning of “holder of highest degree in university” is first found c.1375; that of “medical professional” dates from 1377, though this was not common till late 16c. Verb sense of “alter, disguise, falsify” is first recorded 1774.

From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:

doctor
Middle English, an expert, authority, from Old French docteur, from Latin doctor, teacher, from docre, to teach. See dek- in Appendix I.

Apparently one who has his doctorate is one who is supposedly qualified to teach. Hm.

I am black Jamaican with a graduate degree in Human Service, a $50,000 education depth to repay and I still cannot find a job in social service that pays over $25,000. Now I am thinking of going for the Ph.D. but what is that going to do for me? Nothing I guess.

Should have went to law school like my dad wanted.
Can’t cut it in law school I guess!
LOL

The absolute best part of this post is the comments section where all of these people are saying how funny and accurate this is…while validating themselves by posting their credentials: “I am a graduate student at Stanford…”; “I have a graduate degree in Psychology…”

If we’re gonna stereotype, isn’t this what rich people do. When your talking about grad school, it would be racist to assume white and more realistic to assume rich. Isn’t is wrong to assume, generalize, and stereotype at all? I’ve decided I’m not into this website and don’t think its funny.

it seems to me that most of the posts on here are more about yuppies/upper middle class than white people specifically (althouhg admittedly, there are more white people in that demographic than other races). the problem is that most white people aren’t yuppies/upper middle class. ever been to the midwest, buddy? not a single one of these things that “white people like” works for a standard blue-collar person or caucasian decent. this site is dumb.

Whew, this blog and post came just in time. I was just sinking into an early “urban art school educated liberal” mid-life crisis. I left my Media Ecology grad school program because it costs a fortune and doesn’t result in any particular career, and because I found I love working in sales?!? Sales of course does not usually require higher degrees. This has caused for me a mini-white identity/ego crisis. I know this site is satire, but the list is so true. I didn’t know I was so heavily influenced by White Peer Pressure! White Peer Pressure is real people! And it has to be stopped. That is why I’m going compensate for my feelings of inadequacy by creating a non-profit to fight this real and destructive social problem! (wink) 😉

Though, seeing that PhD literally means DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY and has been the title give to those who graduate from the higher faculties of the universities since the 12th century, the chip on your shoulder does not warrant a change in title, sorry.

omg. i am a cracker from a college town and this describes myself and everyone i know! but i still wouldn’t trade it in for anything else. i’m in love with my elitist references and smarty pants words!

What the hell people…are doctors (physicians) no longer highly respected?
I guess I really am white, because that’s about 60% of the reason I want to be a doctor…I’ll be able to prove that I have a right to be arrogant!

I’ve been in grad school for 8 years and I’m white. This post is wrong. I hate grad school.

You know what white people really like to talk about at dinner parties? White people like to talk about investing in their 401k accounts. Do you use Fidelity or Vanguard they ask? Did you put money in your Roth IRA before April 15th? Some white grad students even start blogs on investing and try to get free advertising by posting URL’s on a blog that gets hit a million times a day. Check out GreenestEgg.com!

This post describes me perfectly, though I’d say grad school is also about avoiding the real world. I would say that is another thing white people love — finding ways to avoid the real world and yet maintain the air of being useful to society/humanity is some way/shape/form.

I plan to finish the phd and teach in Europe. That way I avoid both scenarios, and I get to live in Europe, which, as a white person, I love.

Seriously, “the few to get as far as sitting for the MCAT”? I’m a physician, have been for a few years, and as long as you pay the money, ANYBODY can sit for the MCAT. I know people who are in residencies that I wouldn’t let come near me with any type of blunt instrument. I admire those with the fortitude to actually finish a PhD program, in any discipline. The reason I didn’t go to grad school was that I knew med school was the easier path.

slurs are much worse. Expounding on stereotypes to produce humor is relatively harmless. Slurs sound awful and draw a picture in a person’s mind of a negative quality. Don’t justify your use of slurs with it not being that bad.

looks like rpost3 couldn’t get themselves accepted to medical school
…don’t worry booboo…if your judgment is so off base that you would write something so stupid hopefully you would never get in!

…if you EVER did get accepted you wouldn’t survive it….ya, unregulated herbal medications…you can kill yourself easily in the “herbal medications” area of your nearest drug store…think fat soluble vitamins (i.e. A, D etc) that people down like candy..no vitamins or herbal medications are regulated, therefore little Mr/Miss voodoo can put anything in those bottles…

read some scientific literature booboo…Medline, Pubmed…then get a 4.0 in a meaningful undergrad, spend thousands of hours doing volunteer work, clubs and sports, beat all the odds to get into medical school, try to survive in THAT cutthroat environment while paying ten’s of thousands of dollars to be there, only to be treated like a piece of crap by pretty much everyone who has anything to do with your education….then fight like hell to get into a reasonably decent Residency program where you get paid shit money while working/studying 18-20 hrs days , while paying back the $150,000 dollar loan (and rent, VISA, malpractice insurance etc) only to be treated like shit everyday by your attendings, nurses,office staff, patients, the asshole hospital parking lot attendants who throw $40 tickets on your piece of shit car that is worth less than the ticket…..once you do all of this, then you have the right to call ME a “sell out” even though I literally live for my patients, I love them and my profession, I worry about them when I’m in bed at night while you’re out having a good time. When I’m not working/studying, I get to answer all of my “haven’t heard from relatives in years” medical stories and questions, not to mention my friend’s and their friend’s friends medical questions and “favors” and “can you get me an MRI sooner crap! I haven’t had a real date in years, while all my friends have families, a house, vacations.

You know what jerk off? You wanna know how many friends and family’s hands I have held while they were sick or dying, looking to me for help and answers even when I was just a first or second year medical student with NO FUCKING CLUE what was going on? You wanna know how many REALLY sick and marginalized people I have cared for on my own time for zero dollars because no one else gives a shit about them-only to live in fear that I’ll get sued or kicked out of my Residency program for unprofessionalism just because I GIVE A SHIT??? No you don’t know and trust me -you don’t want to know.

1 in 5 Americans think that the Sun orbits the Earth. Only 1 in 10 know what radiation is…

Most of this stuff reflects the people that write it. I know of zillions of conservatives in professional school. That being said… I can’t sit here and have you say ‘overly’ educated when my first statements are true for much of the white population. Saying people are overly educated is like saying they have too much money. There can be some obscure scenario when it seems true, but it mostly stinks of envy and sour grapes.

Wow. You are such a conceited prick. I cannot stand posts like yours. Nobody’s giving you the admiration and respect you feel you deserve in the real world, right? Way to belittle someone to make yourself feel better. He does have a basic command of English. A “useful tool” for YOU to acquire would be some decency. Some class wouldn’t hurt you either. Perhaps then you’ll learn to treat people better and the world will no longer have to deal with your arrogance and need for attention. Get over yourself. It’s just a blog. Have I called you a pompous prick yet? What a jerk.

You know, I’m in law school right now and I absolute hate it, The faculty is full of themselves and still talk down to you (considering everyone there is at least 22 – 40), the students are losers, and it’s high school all over again.

Hilarious! As a slightly privileged black person I can tell this site really hits the nail on the head. But the part about 3-day weekends and sleeping in everyday doesn’t apply to any master’s program I’ve ever heard of. Between working in a faculty member’s research lab, trying to publish and/or writing a thesis, teaching or TA-ing for an undergrad class and staying on top of your own seminar courses grad programs tend to be about 60 hours a week. But maybe this blog refers to white people who take 4yrs to finish a 2yr program? Just like they took 6yrs to finish undergrad because mommy and daddy paid for it…

Oh yeah, and in my program they also require us to do a summer internship. But if you don’t finish your 300hrs during the Summer guess what you get to worry about during the next Fall? Once again some people who finish grad school actually do deserve some bragging rights, it just isn’t that easy.

I dropped out of a PhD program in the humanities and am now a medical student. I think the combination (over)qualifies me to comment here.

Academic humanities and medicine are both hard, they both require an obscenely high tolerance for delayed gratification, they’re both full of pretension and arrogance of different sorts. I miss sitting around and talking about social theory with my best friends/colleagues. I like knowing that my work is immediately useful and that I’ll be able to get a job in the city of my choosing when I’m done.

Learning is good, especially: languages, history, science, music, art, literature. If you go to grad school you trade any plausible level of income for a socially-acceptable (sort of) cover story that lets you spend more time learning this stuff. Then by the time your cover story expires and you graduate, you’re 32 years old and if you don’t start teaching or some grad-school type job, you have to start from zero. So, if you have “real world” ambitions like prosperity etc. you’re better off skipping the grad school part and learning a trade, so you can start earning right away. You can read Lacan later on in one of the 15 condos you bought by the age of 43 with your plumber’s or electrician’s income, at the point where many young Ph.Ds are just starting to get actually paid. But if you just want to be left alone to read and learn things, grad school is a good sheltered workshop environment for a while. (Except they will exploit you like a serf in some programs, so choose carefully.) The key is not to BS yourself about what you’re doing in those grad schools. You give up your bitching rights about money etc. when take the “grad school” fork instead of “job” fork. So is grad school more “white?” I find most people in grad school are kids of immigrants, who are often white (Dutch people, Scots, Ukranians etc.) who feel pressure to be “professional” and justify the whole immigration thing, yet really just want to read books. But some of the immigrants are not white, which makes grad schools a tad diverse. Whoah, long post, oops.

I decided to respond to this particular posting for the simple reason that this guy stays on topic. All be it chasing the imaginary specter of racism (always with fascist fervor of course!) and thinking pure catholic non-racist thoughts is double plus good and MANDATORY for today’s modern liberal.
OK, now dig this all you groovie TA’s who are sleeping with there professors (you truly are the modern concubine). I dated a grad student getting a PhD in German lit. and a Bader Meinhof/ RAF expert to boot. When I first met her and found out about her expertise I started asking her about things you would think a supporter of left german terror cells would know. I was surprised to find out the she knew nothing of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, socialism or anything dealing with the body of communist ideology. Now my question is how in the hell can you support the Bader Meinhof and know nothing about the very ideas they fought for.
Truth be told this is actually common in academia. Academia truly shows the difference between education and intelligence. A cursory glance at history proves this point.As for me I barely graduated high school and make four times as much as her.
Give up grad student. You ultimately provide nothing for anybody little lone the unwashed masses. To think otherwise is just delusion.

You need to study the history of what ‘doctor’ originally meant. All most so-called doctors do these days is prescribe pills that make you become an addicted drone who probably needs other pills for those pills. I know guys in med school who go on coke binches and drink like crazy in med school. Oh yeah, must be real hard work to get through to earn that M.D.

. . . and YOU are living proof that an undereducated person can be just as big an f’in blowhard talking out his arse as anybody in academia. Do you *really* imagine that you’re some kind of freethinker when in post after post you spout the dumbest talk radio b.s. in the whole thread? Even the guy who poops his pants is better.

And oh yea, you’re right. Whoever makes the most money wins!

What. a. tool.

. . . and if you’d stayed in school longer, maybe you cud spel beter, dikwad.

I agree, it is sour grapes. Right, it does not indicate one is smarter, as it comes to ability of potential smartness. I have observed too many unqualified, idiots, destroy programs where they assume they can cut the cheese, However, instead of finding solutions, or complying with the very laws that pay them, they just sit there. I am not of European genetics, part, but mainly North American.

It is sort of ironic, yet, more false then right, and surely sour grapes. I shake my head daily at the ignorant who think they know something but reallya re the problem inside destroying their own people!

Funny too, many Euroamerican Mainstream Culture members hate me. (lol) As for being stabbed in the back, the educated Mainstream folks in my profession, and the uneducated folks from my own ethnic group, are about equal at being thieves, and oppressive.

It is like being a traditional healer, ya either got it or you do not. Or being an athlete, or being a musician. ATTRACTION (lol)………..

I overcame insurmountable odds, while those who eat sour grapes whine about how much better they are because they sat on their butts. (lol)

I’m a little troubled by the last paragraph. it seems as though the person who wrote this is assuming that nonwhites (or as clander refers to them “You”) feel inferior to whites. was this article’s primary audience meant to be nonwhite? it seems as though Clander is exemplifying #62 “knowing what’s best for poor people” or in this case “knowing what’s best for nonwhites”.
I do not need someone else to tell me I am competent depsite the fact that I feel inferior (assumption of clander), especially in a way that is unflattering (dare I say racist?) to whites.

I am a (fortunately) foreign graduate student, non-white of course… and I am sooo amazed of how much American people pay to get a PhD that I could have for free in my country and still receive stipend. I got funds but even though I really love to learn I do not find worthy to sell myself to the banks. I have to recognize and say that we Graduate students work a lot. It is not true the three days weekends. PhD comics are so funny picturing this. White people are VERY happy paying to attend conferences, the most expensive the better are thought they are.
Another things that I think that white-people (my experience is in the States, so I do not know if ALL white people) love is:

– To say “I am sorry,” when they see everything is messed up and makes it feel that they are really not sorry and actually morbidly enjoying about what is happening.

– To say “Excuse me,” in order to ask you for permission to follow their paths. Even though there is huge free space around the other person. But white people does not love to sorround the person in order to continue their paths. Of course I translate “excuse me” as “get out of my way because I am white and I want the path where you are”

– To say, “Sorry for the inconvenience,” formal way to say the already mention “I am sorry.”

– To say, “how are you?” without really caring about it, this is just a formality. I think tt is better to say nothing, but I think that that leads to the next point, that white people likes.

I’m half-white, and I’m currently doing a PhD in history. Yes, I do my share of complaining but, overall, I’m lovin’ it. Let me tell you, I much prefer doing this over the old 9-to-5 that I did for a while.

And yes, I’d like to become a professor and move to a small town. Why fixate on money when you can take summer breaks and go on sabbatical?

“Why fixate on money when you can take summer breaks and go on sabbatical?”

Now that is a topic worth pursuing – white people do le some sabbaticals and they especially idealize having decent paying jobs where they don’t have to “worry about money!”

It happens to work out really well that a lot of folks who get PhDs from schools that aren’t “top 25” by different measures are frequently hired to teach at smaller country colleges. The economy of it works well – they can get a farm house, tenure is a little less competitive, and the cost of living can be far cheaper.

I love this!!!! Graduate school SUCKS and I wish I had not entangled myself. You are so right…I guess I’ m the first kind of white person, you know, the one who works at a job she didn’t need the degree for in the first place. People in graduate school, especially the white ones, have their heads shoved so far up their ***es, they can’t see @#*T!

“By the way, I attended a Ph.D. program in a program ranked #12…who cares?!”

If I had to guess I would say people in the programs ranked #1-11 are especially pleased – even if they have lower grades they can still feel better than you in their minds… People in schools #13- on down, on the other hand, are (in theory) supposed to be jealous I guess.

At the end of the day, my especially useless degree from a respected flagship state-school is still as useless as from Podunk U. (Slavic Lang & Lit – what WAS I thinking!?!?) I guess if I had taken it at Harvard, I would at least have spent 4 years rubbing shoulders with the wealthy, the powerful, and the interesting… And then been able to brag about what a prestigous school I got a useless degree from…

What is REALLY WHITE is to take 5 years, full time, to complete a Masters and then drop out half way through the doctorate. White people also can’t stick to the topic they and their thesis supervisor decided on after the candidacy confirmation.

Have you seen the neoptism that goes on at Vancouver’s Institute of Art and Design that became a one faculty university? The MFAs going on and on about oppressive regimes will hire the same schmucks who go on and on about oppressive regimes. MFAs are so good at using irony to voice their complains about the technocratic world…

The Master of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Urban Planning are 3 postgraduate degrees that allow White people to talk about Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault and still get a job after they complete the degree. White MFAs are often secretly jealous of MArchs, MLAs and MUPs because after graduation these “design masters” can afford to sit around hip but not yuppie inner city cafes and talk about French philosophy and Walter Benjamin’s notions of the city while the MFAs have to serve them coffee.

Do you mean the few Singaporean or Malaysian arts people who are studying for their PhDs in the US, UK or Australia? They will all go back home one day to some sort of advertising job that their parents have lined up for them.

Are the MFAs at your university jealous of you? You, too, can talk about Giorgio Agamben’s notion of community, Jane Jacobs’ notion of the American civilisation and Nigel Thrift’s notion of nonrepresentational geography… but get pay!

Thanks for your input Hitler. Whose next the artists? Yes Academia turly does show the difference between education and intelligence because not everyone has proven intelligence. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.

My younger sister sent me your website. I agree thus far. I am only at 81 – and I agree. I am currently about to start my second masters in the fall. And your theory is correct. White people do have a crazy need to prove their superior thought. Perhaps I will write more once I get beyond number 81.

Sigh! Guilty as charged! Though I’ll hasten to add that I’m hoping against hope that, instead of the $35K professor job in the-middle-of-nowhere, my PhD will get me the $50K job in the-middle-of-somewhere (that necessitates substantially more than the above mentioned $50K to afford little things like rent and my crippling java addiction). Just think — 5 years in school for a potential $7000 raise over the job I turned down to do the PhD!!! Hooray for idiots like myself who keep unemployment rates down by voluntarily taking ourselves out of the workforce!!!

Actually many humanities master’s/phd programs pay their students. Furthermore, according to the description above, the lifestyle of a graduate student (plenty of leisure time, reading books, etc) is not just comfortable for white people, but for all human beings in general.

I’m currently an industrial and organizational psychology PhD student but was on the medical track for most of my educational career and I have to say it is people like you that had a lot to do with me not wanting to be a part of that community. You might be a smart kid but I cannot imagine what your bedside manner is like. In addition, I would like to echo the comments of many others who remind us that, if you are using “saving lives” as your metric of qualification for the title of doctor, there are countless experts that provide information on cultures, regions, criminal behavior, organizational behaviors, etc. to government agencies that ensure your safety.

I thought this post was hilarious and am fully capable of laughing at myself but I do have to say that PhD’s (although prone to thinking we live a more dire existence than we actually do) do work very hard, particularly in the increasingly popular applied fields. The difficulty with getting a PhD is obtaining the ability to integrate, reorganize and apply the many theories and concepts of one’s field rather than just learn terminology or facts and be able to regurgitate them… like, perhaps, in a medical assessment?

anyways, cheers to everyone pursuing post-graduate endeavors. for the most part it takes a lot out of you no matter the field – hard science, soft science or otherwise, and thanks to SWPL for sweetening up this grad student’s highly important websurfing time between psychometrics articles 🙂

Hope you’re in psychiatry, because you need access to treatment. You are a first class nut. Nobody cares about how hard you work, or how bad you think you have it moron.

You have the right to do what you’re doing only because you are fortunate to live in a place where you have access to the opportunity to use whatever meager talents you have. Shut your mouth and quit whining and get back to work before someone shuts it for you.

Someone as self absorbed as you should be exposed to what real pain and suffering are. Spend some time in Africa, Central America, or Southeast Asia working for NOTHING and then MAYBE someone will consider your comments – for now STFU!!

I’m confused who is getting promoted over the white person? Only a white person gets promoted over another white person, are you talking about just a certain type of white person and things they like? I thought this was about all white people. Only bosses I’ve ever had have been white guys.

Also, you begin a number of sentences with conjunctions, and you should really double-check your understanding of proper nouns, predicates and dependent clauses.

Face it–you’re still that kid awash in his own narcissism, spouting pseudo-philosophical idiocy to your stoner friends in the back of your pickup truck. “As for me I barely graduated high school and make four times as much as her.” Shut up, you insolent prick.

This blog is spot on. It possibly encapsulates the very reason I can’t seem to finish my thesis…I’ve finally rationalized the uselessness that is a MA in history focused on political identity in pre-colonial South Carolina. Yikes…I should’ve just majored in business like every other brain dead frat boy instead of raging against the machine. Hello real world, goodbye adequate salary!

Something else real white people like is putting down education. We celebrate being dumb in our society, even though the U.S. would be a third world country is we really were as dumb as portrayed by Hollywood and NY.

you forgot about the jews, and you should add law. and i’m not raqcist i am a jew so i am actually offended that you forgot us…..who are you going to when you have a health problem, need a lawyer because you messed up, need someone to figure out your taxes so you can read the sunday times style section instead?

dr. know-it-all is certainly “doing his part” by dispensing medical treatment to the poor dying people. maybe if those people didn’t drink and smoke and wreck their bodies on purpose we’d have less pretentious doctors with G-d-complexes. is “I’m better than you” part of the Hippocratic oath? and please…..the doctors i go to have very nice salaries, and vacation frequently, at my expense, be they effective or not, which matter not because that dr. has lawyers and peers who will cover it up….some of those vacations are no doubt paid for by big pharma in exchange for selling their useless drugs…what is it with these pharma commercials? “ask your doctor if you should be taking __________” imagine how many people went to their dr. for vioxx? and is the new purple pill better than the old one, or did it have something to do with patent date? i suppose your pharm reps can explain that to you….And….where did social anxiety come from? And PMDD? oh yeah, GLAXOSMITHKLINE CREATED paxil, because it’s last drug’s patent date ran out….because these disorders never existed before GSK and the APA voted on it….they get along so welll, and they love doctors like yourself so much they they treat you like mafia princesses so you can be a drug dealer. Now that i chewed you out, will you please refill my prescription? that’s all you’re good for…..you would have made more omney pushing street drugs.
the shame is on you dr……

thank you for being honest–it really turns me on. would you like to have coffee and discuss stupid white people? we have tons of material to discuss just from this website, and i’m sure we could deisgn a multiple baseline experiment in order to be *definitively* correct and every other (stupid) white person here will say….”why didn’t i go to graduate school? i don’t even know what multiple baseline means…..I should have listened to my parents instead of going into the peace corps and getting scabies because i’m so idealistic (i.e.venerable,) and i still feel guilty that some hundred years ago my ancestors *may have* enslaved one of your ancestors and i have to make up for it by volunteering at some brazillian orphanage full of children that are the result of stupid people having bastard children to perpetuate overpopulation in conjunction with poverty and lack of education , as well as their status as “the poor people you should “help””because you really…

we are so past postmodernism. what can we even call this era in history? stupidity? insanity? evolution?
does anyone know of a doctoral program in modern existentialism? If there is one, this site should be studied thoroughly as the scholars pursuing this heroic adventure into WTF is going on to te point where white people debate about white people, and can spend almost an hour just getting through the first 100 coments, being offended over and over, correcting each other’s grammar, comparing advanced degrees, bragging about “doing your part,” and….NO0NE OF YOU HAve EVER REALLY INTENDED TO MOVE TO CANADA! that’s just what you say when either a woman or a non-white man is in a position of potential power over the free world (which won’t happen so we can all say it and not intend it-it makes it ok) anyhow, my point is, who studied postmodernism? it’s so 7 years ago.

drink more. Artists should be f*ed up. start smoking. immediately move into a larger apt in order to house your valuabl;e textbooks which will later be sold back to your university bookstore, with which money you will buy adderall or ritalin from some undergrad who doesn’t know how good he’s got it, and invest in starbucks. You will be giving them enogh money to start an economic boom. other than that, be your brilliant self and impress your admirable professors, which means you have a shot at sleeping with him/her.

I found this website. So Heather, even after your college and graduate education, you haven’t learned that the word “currently” should be banned from English language. Even I know this and I’m a medical student. Your comment itself proved that even stupid white people possess a “crazy need to prove their superior thought.” You bunch of master’s-degree leeches should go to professional school and contribute to the society.

At first I laughed, but then I realized that most of these people who don’t have Ph.D.s have no clue what the process is about. Y’all don’t have a clue!

1. Y’all assume that we’re latte-sipping students who want to stay in school for life talking about Foucault. But that’s not true, we want to be finished! Get me out of here!!!

Also, you can’t sit around drinking latte, musing about the world when you have firm deadlines for finishing coursework, written exams, oral exam, Master’s thesis, prospectus defense, and dissertation. You gotta keep it moving and get the heck out of school!

2. Y’all assume that studying anything other than the physical and biological sciences is useless. But who do you think writes the textbooks at the grade, secondary, and college level for your kids? Who do you think teaches the courses at colleges and universities your kids attend? You can’t teach at a university without a Ph.D.! Or are you advocating abolishing all colleges and universities throughout the country?

3. Y’all are critiquing Ph.D.s for going through a long process and then making lower incomes than some people who just have B.A.s. However, many of us have had those opportunities and decided to do what we love rather than be money-driven! I have friends who went into the six figure world immediately after college and they are now looking for meaning and purpose in life.

4: Some critics think Ph.D.s outside the sciences are useless to society. However, who do you think forecasts the population estimates about white people going to be a minority in the next few decades? It’s Ph.D.s in sociology!

Physics can’t tell us why Americans voted again for a President who sent us to a war under false pretenses. Chemists can’t tell us how the redrawing of political lines will influence the representation of minority representatives in Congress. Mathematicians can’t tell us what the dynamics are that cause whites to stay put when their neighborhoods or schools reach a certain percentage of minorities or how integrated schools affect achievement for whites and blacks. I mean, it wasn’t an M.D. who informed us that white men with a criminal record were more likely to get a job call back than black men with no criminal record. I actually value the political scientist who pointed out the nonverbal racial cues politicians used in campaign ads AND used experiments to show how that racial messaging can be overcome.

5: Some people say, why would you do a Ph.D. not to get a job? They don’t realize that our job market is different. We are being groomed to go into jobs at universities. Once we get a tenure-track job and get tenure, our job security is better than 99% of the jobs out there.

6: Finally, for my field especially, people assume that their Sociology 101 college course was easy, so doing that work at the grad level is a copout and easy as well. Bullcrap! Is it easier to consume knowledge and regurgitate it, as is done at the undergraduate level or to be a producer of knowledge as is done at the graduate level? Ph.D. programs are about grooming us to be knowledge-producers!

So yes, I think the one thing I learned from this post is that a lot of people who haven’t done Ph.D.s have no clue what the purpose or process of a Ph.D. is.

I’m a doctoral canditate (public health but a ‘native’ sociologist) and I think 97% of the people that have comments like this one are exagerating (I guess I’m white enough to use statistics but a study abroad in Sweden taught me I’m not as white as I think hahahaha).

The process of becoming a PhD is cool and long and hard but so is every job-getting process… I mean, have you people never seen America’s Next Top Model? you have to SMILE WITH YOUR EYES!!! that can’t be easier than digesting through some Althousser compilation or even a few Foucault or Bourdieu doozersPhDc

I find it funny that you think choosing to use the contraction, ‘y’all’ makes someone sound less intelligent and/or prestigious. I also find it funny that you think that person was trying to sound prestigious in the first place.

I live in a cool neighborhood so I deal with this stuff all the time. One cool white guy told me to listen to something more intelligent for my news (he mentioned a public radio station), after I told him about a story I heard on a morning radio program. He was also wearing a tie with Mona Lisa printed on it. Yep.

I’m getting my PhD and I’m smarter than all the other white, and black people in the world. Oh wait white people aren’t allowed to poke fun at black people. Sorry about that my African compadres, I’m sure all of you have PhDs too.

Haha, very funny! I confess to being in the useless grad degree camp, but I can lay claim to another reason than the one given. I’m too traumatized by the real world to leave my comfortable cocoon of academia. They call us professional students, I think. But, on the bright side, I will graduate with a masters degree and absolutely no debts and unpaid loans due to wise investments by my parents when I was little and being a graduate assistant which pays for my masters. So it’s not all bad is it? All hail useless degrees that make us feel like intellectuals.

It always amazes me when I read a blog (the ultimate worthless thing currently in existence) that puts down art and the humanities. As if we should give up literature, art, or philosophy and go work on an oil rig or design bridges because how could you survive or support yourself any other way? All that other stuff is waste of time. Philistines abound is basically what i’m trying to say, and that life is not totally about pragmatism, efficiency, and being practical.

Your day’s never over,
Your work’s never through!
Though you’ve tamed most of the heathen and the barbarians too!
‘Massa, thanks for ‘lectricity and the (Ah So!) internet too!
WHITEMAN, THE WHOLE WORLD’S DEPENDING ON YOU!

They tried to say that ‘you can’t jump’.
But, you made it to the moon without having to dunk.
You might not have much rhythm,
But you can (steal) carry a good tune,
WHITEMAN, THE WHOLE WORLD’S DEPENDING ON YOU!

You made it through civil rights and women’s lib too,
You’ve been through a lot, good buddy, no wonder you can sing the blues!
If the world’d open their eyes, they’d see that in the past you’re not really stuck,
Even though you still fly a rebel flag, at least it’s on a Japanese pickup truck!

Black may be beautiful, and tan may be grand,
But white’s still the color of the BIG BOSS MAN!
’Ask not’ (J.F.K.) whether it’s true,
WHITEMAN, THE WHOLE WORLD’S DEPENDING ON YOU!

The world doesn’t understand your level of stress,
Every minute’s a Malox moment, but that’s the price of success!
You watch your laptop for the first sign of loss,
Well, it’s time you paid the cost to be the boss!
Don’t drop the ball now and lose the home court advantage,
Or we’ll all have to say the pledge of allegiance in Spanish!(‘Press Uno for English’)
Only you can straighten out the world’s condition,
‘Cause you were properly conceived in the missionary position!
Stand up like a white man and do your white duty,
Or we’ll all be blown to hell by sheik your booty!
ASK NOT whether, Hillary or Obama can rule,
WHITE MAN, THE WHOLE WORLD’S DEPENDING ON YOU!

a professor in my pop. 50,000 city refused to live there, preferring to commute an hour and a half three times a week for the privilege of living Somewhere in a City that had Culture. she often told us about the ballets and plays she saw over the weekends and told us we *had* to go see such-and-such exhibit at such-and-such museum. the city of Culture was Milwaukee, WI, but i suppose you have to make a New York out of wherever you can.

What are you thinking? This is the funniest site since Steve Martin’s “Let’s Get Small” album was released. White, black, asian, cablasian, anyone with a sense of humor can appreciate what is going on here.

Lol there is a blog based off of this one called Stuff Educated Black People like, and it’s funny because I find myself agreeing with all of the posts… Same way I see a lot of the posts in this blog in many of my white friends. Don’t be so quick to assume that we’ll cry racism.

One thing stops me from seeing the humor as clearly as you and that’s my inability to see where you find fault with some of these ideals (though a few of them I understand). What is so important to the non-white world that you find culture, art, the humanities, and philosophy laughable?

What is the ultimate pursuit? Clearly you’ve figured it out.

Also, the line about going to college and complaining about being poor is a little bothersome to me because, being white and yes (gasp), poor, I have yet to find anyone with minority interests that can even believe a white male like myself doesn’t live in mansion and rule the world with one finger. I had a girl at work stare at me in utter disbelief when I said I honestly don’t feel as if I owe anything for the actions of my “ancestors”…I barely even know my father and, on my mother’s side, we came from Mexico in 1911 (though that hardly matters since my skin doesn’t reflect it so there’s no feasible way I might still suffer from their setbacks, right?). Also, those highly educated whites are less likely to be racist because they view such things as being “uncultured” and often study along numerous races – so making fun of them seems a bit uncalled for. I don’t get the point of this site, because it’s clearly not meant to foster goodwill between the races.

actually, he fails to make much of a point at all. He does however continue the stereotype of white people (not a *person* but people…all of us) being wealthy and in charge. I’m not wealthy and I’m sure as fuck not in charge of anything…I go to work (sitting right along side people of both genders and all ethnicities..making the same 7 something an hour) and hit the enter key over and over for 10 hours (yea, I’m doing pretty good for myself with this bachelors degree that I earned from working my ass off…oh and accumulating thousands of dollars in pure debt to the wonderful US government). Chris Rock has more money and power than most white people can imagine. There are a very precious few elites in this country (the US has a HUGE socioeconomic gap) and they come from all sects of society. I have lived in a 12 foot camper without electricity or running water…slept on a fucking fold-down table – I don’t tolerate this shit about the fortunate white man who has all the world in his hand and every opportunity at his doorstep.

I took a (get ready for it!) graduate class on cultural foundations. She had us read 2 books: “A Different Mirror” by Takaki and “We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know” by Howard. Takaki’s told the history of America through an unbiased (read Non-white) perspective. A truly great book for those interested in history.

Howard’s discussed White dominance and how simply being White plays a part in our lives (blah, blah, blah). Basically, if any White person out there is saying to themselves, “I’m not racist. I didn’t commit the racist crimes of our nations’ past. Why should I have to PAY the consequences of my ancestors.”

Consider Howard’s metaphor:
“Racism for Whites has been like a crazy uncle who has been locked away for generations in the hidden attic of our collective social reality. This old relative has been part of the family for a long time. Everyone knows he’s living with us, because we bring him food and water occasionally, but nobody wants to take him out in public. He is an embarrassment and a pain to deal with, yet our little family secret is that he is rich and the rest of us are living, either consciously or unconsciously, off the wealth and power he accumulated in his heyday. Even though many of us disapprove of the tactics he used to gain his fortune, few of us want to be written out of his will.” (Howard 2006)

i think this site has some painfully sharp humor. it obviously strikes a chord with many commentors. i do think it reflects my personal thoughts on the matter as well, which in reality are FUNNY when you think about it…

here is my personal algorithm so far through life…

white: deny racism=your racist
white: acknowledge racism=your racist

minority: trying to succeed=not good enough
minority: don’t try to succeed=not good enough

maybe this site can help some folks become better at not being good enough.

Wouldn’t it be “you’re racist”? Unless of course you are referring to my personal racism..which wouldn’t make much sense either, and is nonexistent. And I can say that although I have an MA in history, I realize that it’s a totally useless degree.

I did enjoy studying it for 6 years, though work experience is a better option. However, this blog is hilarious, and I enjoy reading it.

how can this be racist towards whites if its made by a white person? obviously if you, whom I’m assuming is white made a site about black and asian people it would be racist, which you’d realize if you didn’t just bring that up to be an asshole. If Asian people or black people made a site like that, then it wouldn’t be racist.

“You’re nothing?” And who are you? How can you prove you’re any better because if you’re saying he’s nothing cause he’s black and making fun of white people then I’d say you were nothing but its not possible to simultaneously be nothing and a hypocrite.

OK, I am loving this list. I just discovered this list and cannot read through it fast enough—it is both hilarious and enlightening. One conclusion I have come to is that maybe White people feel this way about graduate school, and the other list items, is because these things are either necessary, fun, logical, or the right thing to do. What makes this obvious is that many people do a lot of the things on the list and not b/c they want to be White, but rather, for the above mentioned reasons. I counted 38 out of the 106 that apply to me and have applied for many years. It is true that finishing graduate school is about preserverance. If the last semester had not been the last semester, I would have quit from sheer exhaustion. I left feeling I would never want to write another paper in life. I think they, as I, did not realize that they could make more with a good skill. The realization that I spent all of that time and money to only be able to get a job paying in the high 30s at best was painful; however, I would do it all again b/c it gives one a wider window on the world.

Uncle Sambone is a white blogger speaking in the voice of a black person that is grateful to receive the oppression of whitey (ie cars, the internet, etc.) you’re stupid if you can not decipher his dumb poem it is written on a fifth grade level

How can it be racist when he is talking about his own people. I am not following that logic. I find it a valuable cultural tool to enlighten those who are not White about a segment of that population. I say a segment b/c clearly, not all folk of any group are the same.

heh, well david i think perhaps that if you do not see the obvious humour within this particular blog – it is likely that you are one of those select few that delivers diatribe’s of useless referencing and directional conversation obliteration in order to sound “intelligent.” Either that, or you’ve bothered with post-graduate studies, rather than say… hmmmm, employment?

There is a saying, “those who teach can not do.” So it is thusly expanded that those who express, can not see.

I enjoy the arts, literature, have a fascination with the relentless digressed nature of humanity with each passing generation, however…

i don’t think it really matters. as a matter of point, 50cents and that information will give you a phone call…

or a blog… it’s up to you whether or not you pay your tuition i suppose…

What ever happened to hiring people because they are the best qualified for the job? It’s that simple! Affirmative action just makes the more qualified people pissed off and creates a chain reaction of negativity with those shafted by the system.

White people also like being literary snobs. While misspelled words may be an annoyance to some (including myself) it’s an annonymous post, not a thesis, with little to no reputation costs. As for the grammar aspect of your critique: ugh, language is ever changing with hard and fast rules being thrown away. For example, I like to occasionally split infinitives.

Too bad. I enjoy this blog and was excited to see a posting on graduate school. We English grads like to make fun of ourselves… and I was with you for a while, but I was disappointed to see it that it ends up merely perpetuating stereotypes and misunderstandings about the academic world. And sounding really bitter toward the people who didn’t drop out of a PhD program.

Actually, the article didn’t sound at all bitter. I know a couple of people who fit this description perfectly. You however, sound quite bitter. Get some really good sex before you’re 35, Liz, you’ll be glad you did.

You have to go to graduate school in the States to do Medicine or Law? We in Fiji just directly enrol into a Bachelor program for either profession………… currently I’m in my second year of MBBS – Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery.

That’s SO not the point. The blog is saying that having a masters in these kinds of things does not make you more qualified for very many jobs. This implies that the person is being promoted because they spent those extra years gaining experience in their field, rather than studying more. You will notice a Masters in computer science will quickly get you promoted over the competition, while one in European Literature will not.

Nice post. I’m thinking about going to grad school, cos to be honest I don’t know what the hell to do with my life. At least I can pass the time, meet knew people, and learn something. The funny thing-I’m not white, I’m Mexican.

While the author obviously has real insight into the graduate school compulsion of white people, he neglects the fact that I, like many of my white classmates went back to grad school because it was the only way to continue our debaucherous undergraduate lifestyles. Bing drinking, imbibing, and the endless pursuit of getting laid by young women before the ol’ biological clock starts ticking!

Grad school is a great way to delay the inevitablility of breeding, having an unrewarding and uninteresting career and of course chronic depression treated by zoloft!

Anyone that goes through the time and expense I went through to get a Masters, only to turn around and call it ‘useless,’ really shouldn’t have bothered in the first place. One wonders why you would bother in the first place. Is money really so fluid for the mythical white person?

I’m not offended by this post, just kind of miffed at the obviously incurious people saying that a Masters is merely a clever ruse to slack-off for a further 1-3 years without going to work. I worked a full-time job all through grad school, and I am still £30,000 away from being broke. I’m moving back in with my parents shortly after I graduate with an MSc (Hon) in Creative Writing.

And though I will be spending sixty hours a week in a day job, with weekends reserved for working at a cafe (hey, white folks like coffee, right?) I’d do it all again in a second. It’s made me a better writer, gave me a renewed interest in reading (shocking as it may be, writers rarely read) and all in all a saner, calmer, more curious person.

But then grad school, like so many things, is entirely what you make of it.

not offended, just thought it noteworthy that my dad went to nam twice as a seal captain and then came back and became a lawyer. For a good cause. Just thought I’d let you know since you had to be a downer.

They can believe they are helping the world, complain that the government/university doesn’t support them enough, claim they are poor, feel as though are getting smarter, act superior to other people, enjoy perpetual three day weekends, and sleep in every day of the week!

I pity you. Don’t be offended by this post, it absolutely does not apply to you. An M.A., especially in the humanities, in the States is very different than the UK in several very important ways: the expectations are lower, it’s easier to do it without going into debt, and you can be a hell of a lot lazier, especially since you’re spending at most 9 hours a week in class.

I would also disagree with the author of the blog that the Master’s of your type, the arts types, are a different beast and attract a different type of person, not the white person who wants an M.A. in Gender Studies to flaunt in front of other people.

You, and many people like you, are in a program much more like an apprenticeship or trade school. You are honing your craft. I’m getting paid to travel to Ireland and waste three years of my life writing about Irish-English in the 17th century. 🙂 Of course it’s what you make it, but it’s been my experience that it takes a special (and I don’t mean that in a very nice way) type of person to stick it out through grad school in a liberal arts program. And that type of person is the white person guilty of many of the other things on this list, like veganism, threatening to move to Canada, knowing what to do about poor people, and pea coats.

Congratulations on what you’re doing and best of luck. Don’t for one second lump yourself with us snobs. 🙂 Cheers.

I wish that was the way we did it here. It just seems so much saner. Why spend 4 years and $80,000 getting a liberal education if you are going to be a doctor? We have a doctor shortage in this country because it is so damn expensive and exhausting to become one.

Sure I’m in a doctorate program. However it’s in a healthcare field. Although all grad students are there for some reason or another, I do think that a lot of areas that people go to grad school for are ridiculous, and ridiculously easy to get through as well. What the heck are you going to do with an M.F.A in Theatre Studies?

My gf tells me I’m a walking Outdoor Research commercial (I recently made her buy a “performance clothes” outfit; backpacking boots included). Also, I remind her of that line from the song White and Nerdy: The Pens in my Pocket, I must Protect Them.

Aw, damn … I’m not white, though … and I did go to graduate school and I DID work in publishing for 10 years before I switched to a field where I’m making even less money. I came from San Francisco and moved to New York. I went to an art college. This mean I … Holy Caucasoidal Syndrome, Batman — I think I’m white after all!!!

WhiteLike gets it right: almost all white people go into graduate school because it is the next hurdle to jump. Or they vaguely like a certain subject enough to try specializing in it. Some even think it’s a good way of dodging a bad economy.

As with many of the things indicated by this site, SWPL white people are sad, deluded creatures.

I have seen a dozen such white people in my class move on to better things after failing with varying degrees of a spectacular whimper.

Graduate school–and I mean getting a Ph.D., because a Masters is a cake walk–is for a very select, damaged kind of person that cannot function in normal society with normal people. I have one, I am one, and I knew both had to be the case early on.

I think the author of this post misses the point. Graduate school is fun, you inevitably make more money when you finish and while you’re in it you are getting paid (if you’re savvy) to study. Where’s the downside again?
Oh yeah, that’s right being educated is “white”. After reading most of this blog I have to wonder if the purpose of this blog to persuade minorities to avoid higher education. Because that’s not funny it’s ignorant.

This over-educating yourself out of the possiblity of useful employment in order to increase social status craze has not hit White Australia yet.Noone here gives a damn and few people go to grad school.

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I get the joke behind this article and I’m a graduate student, myself. Making fun of myself helps me stay sane, sometimes, just like anyone else. But here’s the thing- the reality is that we all know for most majors, a bachelor’s degree is the new equivalent of a high school diploma. The US has most of the best universities in the world, but the high schools are piss-poor, so it’s a huge jump for many people, even the smart kids. In a lot of fields, you don’t get a decent job without at least a master’s degree. So in the end, the kids getting graduate degrees are the ones who end up ahead of the game and above the bachelor’s degrees, in many cases. Are there exceptions? Sure. But not very many. Graduate school is a pain in the ass and not always necessary… but in many cases, it’s a huge help. My salary has doubled and the work I do now is much more fun and interesting.

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I’m white and in medical school. :-). These posts crack me up, yeah snowboarding is and always has been a big part of my life along with surfing and skateboarding. I like typical white people activities like working hard, being middle class paying taxes supporting America, drinking green tea, reading the onion. I took a year off and taught English in Eastern Europe. My family is from Germany; I speak German but I’m always promising myself to up my vocab. #108 I majored in classical music in undergrad. I know this is satire but I won’t lie all this stuff rocks. If these are the things white people get made fun of for HELL YEAH bring it on, damn straight I’m white I’m going to have an awesome career as a physician serving mankind, going on missions trips, taking vacations to Europe to visit my family, playing classical guitar on the side. Awesome life.. Apparently I’m so white I don’t even get the point of this blog??

Sorry for being rude, doctors and lawyers use this a model in their professions where once you’re in, you’re in; and all you do is to do your best to keep other people out such that you can charge big fees to f*ck-all. It doesn’t really has anything to do with holding out a better standard … yours views are, may I regrettably say, somewhat from living in a hole …

You will be surprised that a lot of those doctors, lawyers and professionals that you despise will out perform you lot if I ask you all to take exams tomorrow alongside with them.

Also, do you know that each year drug companies spend millions of dollars to bribe doctors with freebie to have them endorse unproven drugs? On this alone I would say doctors in the West fail the ethics test already.

It is no longer politically correct to say a person can’t do this or that because he or she don’t have the right background, but what you have said it the living prove that the old mind set is still alive and well, and in your words that is the licences and regulations.

It seems that you, the author, have been kind of jaded by a lot of these different situations. These are all generalizations, that, while applicable to a large portion of whities, would be considered racist in any other setting. And I realize the irony that by my pointing this out, I’m fulfilling the white person’s love of not being racist, etc. etc, but it’s true all the same. Might as well enjoy some of it. Coffee really is a good drink, and studying abroad is a good way to better learn a language.

I know that this blog is all in good fun, and I know that probably for many, many people who go into graduate school, their dreams don’t turn into a reality, but I would like to add just one comment that shows grad school in a positive light.

Maybe you didn’t love all of your professors or think they were all doing valuable work. But regardless, many professors love their jobs. For some people, the opportunity to think and write on subjects that they find fascinating and important is vital. Many of my professors, at least, try to tie their work to the “real world” in some way. Granted, I didn’t go to community college or an Ivy-league, so apathy and snobism weren’t really an issue. I guess I just want to say that it is possible for professors to be happy and to do some good in the world. It may not be for everyone, but it shouldn’t be dismissed as total garbage either. I think most of my professors were very down-to-earth people, respectful of the fact that being an expert in an obscure field does not make them better than others or than their students; it simply makes them fit for what they do, which is hopefully teach others, present students with some new ideas, and contribute work to the world of academia which others may find interesting and helpful.

I guess I have to believe that, though, since professor-hood is where I’m aiming 🙂 With a plan for publishing as my back-up.

What’s wrong with choosing a career path that educates people? If we, as in The United States, are going to maintain being a world leader, we have to educate our people. Otherwise, we’re going to be run down and run over by other countries who are educated.

Hilarious. I love this blog. This post, in particular, prompts me to write. I’m a recovering white person, or maybe just a recovering academic (since I still like grammar, coffee and tee shirts) and I pursued a higher degree, until I got into such a funk about my career and direction in life. My friend recommended that I contact her life coach: http://www.insistonyourself.com.

I did. She is awesome. The whole experience was awesome. I’m still getting my masters but I’m also learning to work with guide dogs. It is way more rewarding than my academic life and if I want to do that for a career I’d make a decent living.

Anyhow, this post made me laugh at myself and feel really grateful that I got help from my life coach.

man, there are way better posts on here than this one, and way funnier things about white people in grad school. I know because I am one– this just sounds kind of like sour grapes or something . step it up, you’re better than that!

i dunno.i think he got this right for sure.im sure it doesnt apply to all though.i also think he should have added about how everyone goes to graduate school because they dont know what the hell to do after college.i think they usually move back in with mommy and daddy

College gotten very costly, why not have state-subsizided universities like the European socialist countries? Same with universal health care. Americans don’t like “free” of cost things, but love freedom so much, we have “freedom fries” and hamburgers are “cheap, close to free lunch”. We need to renamed burgers “liberty sandwiches”. LOL!+

Wait until you have been out of graduate school for awhile and this post will either drive you to drink or make you laugh heartily . . . because it’s dead on true! I know – I have both a law degree and a Masters in International Relations. Best of luck to you!

no one in their right mind goes to schooling, or college anymore, complete waste, we are in a depression, hiring freezes galore, massive unemployment, and a rigged USA policy of hiring–cronyism, nepotism, bias, ageism, buddy system and having right last name. schooling may have been fine in the 70-early 80’s but it is now a relic–only trust funding fools who have no talents go to college to “learn” god know what. and what you are “learning” has no real world value/knowledge set. college is great for naive, ignorant, idealistic fools living off of their parents/relatives.

Though this article is applicable to many fields out, there are fields where a graduate degree is still essential. I am in graduate school, on my own dime, because though I had more real work experience, I would always not get the better paying job because the company would hire someone with a Master’s degree instead of me. There is no doubt in my mind that graduate degrees in the sciences pays off in the end. One thing we can learn is that generalizations or stereotyping usually makes you look uninformed at best.

no one is hiring dear Christopher, kid yourself into thinking that degrees open the hiring door?!?! Nepotism, cronyism, buddyism, ageism, and having right last name is all that matters. You are idealistic and a fool to think even more schooling during a severe recession/depression will help your cause. In the sciences, the asians/orientals and indians (H-1B visa holders) have those low paying jobs sown up. The white boys/girls–good luck. Are you gonna work during christmas, yom kippur, new years, weekends, nighttime, early mornings 4-5AM???? No, the foreigners will, cuz once they get the taste of the USA dollar–it’s intoxicating, like a drug….. greed/money/money/greed===BOOMER mentality.

Write a lame textbook, then have your idiot students buy it, it works at most joke party the hardy state schools. Great way for dolts with PhD or other joke degrees to make a little extra money b/c most are poor or living off of their parents into their 40s.

Many of these “professors” seem to enjoy living in poverty, they have peter pan syndrome–neva wanna grow up. Sounds like Maubama.

with double digit unemployment rate and horrible economic situation, maybe all those degrees can be put to use, like moving back in with mommy and daddy, and finding one’s self like backpacking through europe and telling people they are down with the poor people. yaaaaaah right.

“Go to college, stay in school and have a job” are moralistic cries for people to not be lazy and contribute to society. But not everyone has college diplomas or good paying jobs, esp. in this terrible economy. It’s gotten worse since the 1980s and most young white college grads. hope to get a job in McD’s or BK, but here comes the illegal immigrants to replace them when the hourly wage goes above minimum. +

Welcome to the Bushit economy, advanced Reaganomics to put away the former middle class. Big business acts like it can do whatever it wants…dominated by white people of the blue-blooded elite, or in the case of GOP politicans made up of “get rich quick” scam con artists with a third world plantation mentality. No wonder the Democrats made a comeback and the socialists are gaining ground. +

“college” degrees and diplomas are a farce-NO ONE IS HIRING. Keep paying all those fees, tuitions, etc… NO ONE IS HIRING. college is a big scam, lie, and sham, and outdated. Leave “college” to the foreigners and the asian people.

you do not need to go to a farcical “college” to be educated. no one is hiring. period. we are in a severe recession heading into a depression; it will take at least 5-7 years to have a quasi-recovery–regardless of all the govt. happy talk and PC BS. College is a SCAM. Most of the millionaires and billionaires have NOT gone to “college”—studying useless crap and paying thousands of dollars for nothing is a waste of time and precious money. unless you like competing with other dopey whites for office jobs with pastey white skin and office parties and crappy meetings–is that why you like to go to the “college” or is it about drinking and copulation?

hooray for hegemonic ideology.
this is entirely symptomatic/systematic.

‘what will you laugh at if all this collapses?’
‘oh, but it can’t collapse you fool! this is how the world just is! lol !11111 =)’

‘you are all pretentious – you are out of touch with the world.’
‘have you seen what’s going on outside your window?’
‘no, i’m too busy watching Failblog videos on Youtube and downloading porn for “outside”! wait, what the fuck? why is there nothing in my bank account? why is the electricity faltering? why is my interne-‘
‘my point exactly.’

this one is hilarious! i know so many people that match this perfectly, especially the ones that did philosophy. im in grad school right now, but my life isn’t at all like the world described above. (although i did think it would be because college was easy and awesome) busting my ass 60+ hours a week and not even being able to watch my football teams because half my weekend is spent in the library is hardly the life i imagined for myself. then again, i guess if i like football i might be the wrong kind of white person. i think that’s the best part about this website, (assuming you’re white) either u match the picture created and half to laugh at yourself or u don’t identify at all and are therefore assumed to be inferior and a type A douchebag

I am in graduate school and some of this is true and some isn’t. Certain
Having a MA opened a lot of doors for me I wouldn’t have had otherwise. It’s the only reason I have the job I have now. Having a BA in many places (especially in a city) is crucial. For example, even working as just an administrative assistant in a major company you usually need your BA (basically to prove you’re not an idiot)
Graduate school is almost a necessity in certain fields, such as say, biochemistry for example.

This whole blog is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek and sarcastic. Pull the giant stick out of your bum, relax, and enjoy it for what it is. I have a graduate degree too, and I don’t regret having gotten it but that’s hardly the point of this article. Kudos on a great post!

Again, it should be kept in mind that this criticism is mostly suitable for arts degrees. For us science majors it is difficult to get a good job with just a BA degree, unless you want to be doomed to a life as a low-grade lab assistant who makes solutions and orders antibodies all his time, rather than actually running or even assisting with a research project. (We like to climb the career ladder too, after all…)

This is why we Kazakhs and other Asians like to study abroad in America so much (an American Ph.D. really opens the door for all sorts of things – job in our home countries, job somewhere in Europe or other country in Asia, job in USA if we are lucky). So I guess those two things (study abroad, liking graduate school) must make us white too?

I got a graduate degree in comp lit, and most of the people in there were completely immersed in white privilege–complete hypocrites. Needless to say, I got out of academia and became a librarian. Couldn’t be happier.

Flashbacks to sitting a a table with people arguing over what wording to use on a call for papers for a graduate conference, as they feared offending someone with language that was to strong. Heavens forfend the word “won’t” being in a sentence, it’s so negative.
Aside from the sleeping in thing, this post is painfully true.

most “phds” are poor, living off others, or being gypsies making under 30K proclaiming their “science” permutations. They are idealistic and stupid. Why live a life of poverty to study/write BS papers no one reads, and to live in a studio apt. while riding around in a 10 year old hatchback.

amen, very few are hiring, that is the new America–a sinking ship economy whereby foreigners are more afforded jobs due to their abilities to work cheap and everyday of the week, with no benies. grad school in biochem–what a joke, instead of making 32K with a bachelors, you can make 38K a year….wow.

In response to your (probably rhetorical) question:
They’ve found something they care about more than their income, housing, vehicle, etc., something that gives their life meaning, something they’re passionate about.
Some people pimp their cars, some people write papers about Jorge Borges, some people build houses, etc. None of those choices make any of the people better than each other.

I’m not white, but I’m majoring in English and Philosophy, and I hope I make it into grad school someday.
I hope I’m not offending my family by choosing to study English over Spanish, but if I am, I’m sure they’ll get over it eventually.

If there’s anything I love about white people, it’s their appreciation for studies that raise more questions than they answer.

“Useless” knowledge is awesome.

Oh, and that supposed reference to Lacan and Zizek while discussing American Idol? Priceless! I hope I actually get to listen in on such an inane conversation someday. It would make my day.

Actually, most PhDs earn excellent salaries. The average in the U.S. is just under $100k, much higher than any other education category except professional degrees. Many PhDs are cynical, smart, and write BS papers no one reads to ride around in BMWs, have no boss, sleep in every morning, and have ironclad job security. I hope you’re enjoying your cubicle, Lisa.

Excellent point, Joe. Lisa, I hope you’re listening. No one should belittle higher education, or those who choose to pursue it. Especially since the higher salary is hardly what matters. I like to think that most PhDs took the time to study something helpful to humanity, and more importantly, something that makes them happy.

So non-white people (blacks, latinos, asians etc.) are all vacuous, ignorant consumer whores with no interest in anything but their nikes and flat screen tvs? I thought it seemed that way, but I didn’t want to group all non-whites together like that. Well, knowing is half the battle!

You near the end of high school and you think “I am going to try to do something good with my life. I am going to do some kind of work that makes me happy. I want to do something that will always be alive and interesting.”

The reality that this will not ever be the case hits you sometime around your 3rd year of college when you have been up all night writing a paper that makes no sense and has no use. You have entitled it “Nostalgia in Shakespeare and Eric Rohmer.” You chose to pursue liberal arts because you always leaned toward English over math and you misguidedly follow bizarre impractical impulses. You believed the guidance counselor who told you to follow your dreams.

Hell does not exist later, it is here, now; the horror of life. Day after day you are in misery. You will never realize your goals or do anything worthwhile. You don’t even have the dignity of an excuse for your position. You are the only one to blame. You are a piece of shit on the sole of society. You become lost and disillusioned. You realize that you are and have always been an idiot. You spend every day doing the same things and you grow older. You have wasted your time. You deserve no pity.

You remember brief flashes of happiness and hope. Your entire existence is defined by trying to return to them, but you cannot, because you have tied your own hands. You realize this, and death becomes an objective option. Not to say that death is the correct choice, but simply that you must choose between it and continual unhappiness.

Nothing is good, nothing is bad. Everything just is. The end is near, the end is now. It doesn’t really matter, because the things you do make no difference. The end will come either way, and in the end you will probably still remember only the moments of idealized happiness you thought you experienced. All things lead to continuation without progression.

Art is pointless. Literature is pointless. Music is pointless. Why examine things that are already clear to someone who has experienced them? If you forget about these things, you can get down to work and accept it without a sense of loss. Or you can hold onto them and die.

I imagine you wrote this while pretending to pay attention in your Perspectives in Postmodern Literature class. :3

However, you make a good point. The academic system is supposed to provide training for future careers, not for a bunch of head up their ass professors to swamp you down in theories and analysis because they could never create anything worthwhile in their youth.

Hm…. this guy has a great point. For example, I’m getting my PhD in physics and my work is in renewable energy; I really doubt that when I go work for a corporation that my contribution would be minimal.

If you count reading math as reading… then sure I read all the time! The ‘real’ book that I am working on now is ‘Alice in Wonderland’…. And I’m sure all the engineers that go to grad school and design future planes, boats, nuclear weapons, run the financial industry (which is dominated by mathematicians and physicists) are pretty useless too. Oh yeah and you know those people with their PhD in economics… like the guy that “invented” the Euro, or the guy that ran the U.S. treasury… they didn’t do much either?

And as much as I would love to rag on business people, people with their MBA have proved their intelligence level is above that of an ameba.

In all honesty, I think someone that is truthfully intelligent knows how dumb they really are, which is independent of whether or not one has gone to college. <- the one thing I do agree with.

Who says that the academic system, beyond technical schools, high schools, or trade schools, are simply there to provide training for future careers? I always thought that universities were here as repositories of knowledge that could be accessed and shared by anyone (well, in the US, anyone with enough money). No, theories and analysis are the reasons we have the understanding about the world that we do. It’s not as if physics doesn’t operate under theoretical paradigms, like, for instance, the models of scientific inquiry, while archaeology or philosophy do nothing but talk about useless theory, like, let’s say, ethics, or even the philosophy of science.

It’s a logical fallacy to assume that because you did not learn anything you deemed worthwhile in a course or courses at a university, that therefor all courses that share an explicit commonality with it are useless.

Link may not work. Comment thread:
D1> What a load of crap; a very large number of people in grad. school are actually brown not white. Also while some people go because they don’t know what else to do with their life and it seems like a step further forward, grad. school is full of characters–definitely not dull. And while I can see how someone might say that medical school might be more important than grad. school, where does this writer get off calling law school more important?
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ME> I’m more or less with you, and the racial part is unarguable. I enjoy, however, that it pokes fun at the study of things (literature, of course topping the list) that really have no role outside of the environment that teaches them. Gotta disagree on History, though. Law and Medicine are clearly grouped not by importance, but by the financial practicality of those degrees. Beyond that, though, it’s comedy and I’m not going to argue the points of a farce.
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D2> And only the financial practicality as we see it in the West. Doctors and lawyers salaries are dependent on the society those people find themselves in. That actually holds true for the medicine or law being a good degree to go after. For instance, in Korea, you have better chances of getting a job if you study English Literature, than if you study medicine or law, since the later are much harder, take longer, and there are fewer openings, English Lit. is an easy way to secure a job in just about any company.
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ME> One of those things where they just want a degree, any degree? I see that a lot more in the US than I ever used to.
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D2> I think it’s because English literacy is so prized here, that gaining a degree in English lit. is taken to mean that your English (possibly excluding spoken) is pretty good. So, it’s a definite bonus to candidates for jobs, even if they aren’t high paying…though there is the whole bloated Hagwon system always ready to consume any new graduate of an English program.
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ME> Ah, so a degree in Korean literature wouldn’t be as valuable? Contrary to my immediate reality, I don’t tend to think of careers that require leaving the USA.
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D2> aha, funny, since I’m not currently thinking of careers that require me to return.
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ME> My main fear , somewhat misplaced perhaps since neither you nor da speak Korean, is that it would just be too hard to live somewhere where I wasn’t fluent in the language. I find it frustrating how hard it is to be understood by other native English. Even moving to say Boulder CO would be nerve racking, but another country, argh.
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D1> Your example, D2, reminds me a bit of a story I heard about British companies hiring people with degrees in Japanese rather than engineering after having figured out that training people to become proficient in Japanese (in Japan) usually took longer than it took to train them in whatever the technical skills were.
To ME: you show a definite bias against the study of literature. You seem to have spared history, as a field, your derision. How about music, visual art, philosophy, area studies, etc.? Or how about the pure sciences or pure math where much of what they do has little immediately evident purpose? Are these really any more worth studying than literature, which is, after all, mostly engaged in analyzing the product and process of the universal human trait to tell stories?
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ME> Stories are fine, but I don’t think literary analysis does anything to further the production or usefulness of stories. I you have a story, tell it (and make sure you know the language well). Read stories, discuss them with other people, but none of that is grad level stuff. Not rly room or inclination to specifically talk about every degree offered. Pure math and science, if there really is such, is at a minimum good since practical results come of it.
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D1> As I said, you’re incredibly biased. You never can know what will spawn practical results. You like taking electronic things apart, some people like doing the same thing with stories etc. (not saying that I am really one of them). Nuff said. Actually, the biggest crime of this article was that it was trying so hard to be funny that it wasn’t really funny. If you want funny insight into grad. school, Matt Groening is the man.
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ME> Biased towards what? Things that have meaning outside of the academic orbit they’re taught in? Guilty. Anyway, clearly it didn’t amuse you, but I think it’s pretty funny and includes the right amount of selective truth that goes along with good satirical comedy. I mean, yeah you might end up with some unappealing career choices like prof. in obscure college if you get some of those degrees, regardless what the overall “value to humanity” may be to the studies. Not always, but enough to poke fun, especialy if the students are feeling all self-important about themselves. Sorry if it pissed you off, certainly wasn’t my intention.
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D2> You know, I’ve always found these sorts of commentaries (I’ve heard plenty) to be a bit…short-sighted? Or maybe suffering from a skewed notion of what education and knowledge are? I’m not sure which…anyhow. They always tend to make arguments along the same lines, a)If the degree does not guarantee good income it is useless, b) if the degree does not produce what “I/we” consider to be meaningful outcomes and products, it’s useless. While I find higher level degrees in things like English Lit. to be a bit beyond my ability to answer, “Why would I?” I think that these commentaries either play the idiot, or simply don’t grasp that education, knowledge, schooling, etc, have less to do with being financially well-off, or measuring up to some social standard of “useful”. I can’t imagine a more useless degree (using their criteria of money and practicality) than my own study of archaeology in general (zooarchaeology and near eastern languages in particular). But, I simply don’t care if it’s useful or will make me rich. I’m more interested in the satisfaction I derive from the study and the knowledge itself.
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ME> You’re not a smug prick with unrealistic expectations though, so you’re not rly the butt of that article’s jabs. Neither is Damon for that matter.
about an hour ago ·
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D2> Well thank you, I hope I’m not…but then, I have doubts about the author of this article. It seems that “Clander” is guilty of the same crime he throws on those of us that do value higher education and have done that most heinous of acts, namely, embracing a degree that the author finds to be useless. Clander consistently touts how grad/PhD students are in it just to prove they are trying to prove they are smarter, but by writing this article, isn’t the author guilty of the same trespass? Worse, if knowledge and education are a means unto themselves, isn’t the author simply claiming that ignorance if preferable to those fields of study that the author deems useless?
Plus? Clander’s list, I feel, shows a great deal. Anyone who claims that political science, gender studies, international studies, history, philosophy, or classics are useless disciplines in a world that is increasingly governed by inequality, sprawling political bureaucracies, ignoramus’, and historical grudges…well, I can’t really find much respect for their opinions regarding education.
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ME> A satirist may well be guilty of the sins he lampoons. Dunno if that’s the case here. Personally, I suspect, though I do not know the curricula, that at least half of what’s studied in such degrees isn’t the least bit relevant to helping someone actually DO something about those problems you mention. (incidentally, much of the core EE classes taught largely useless theory as well). Really, though, he’s not saying the degrees are useless or valueless, just that they may lead to a sense of being smarter/better, but no income to go with it. I imagine that’s true in enough cases to warrant the comic overgeneralization.
Plot the average income for a graduate in each field and compare that to his list. I think that’s what he’s basing it, imprecisely, on. Or, ratio of snootiness to income 😉
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Who the hell could possibly argue that literature brings more benefit to the world than pure math or science? Without math and science, we would still be living in the goddamn cave trying to figure out why fire is hot and how to avoid getting killed by the common cold. Math and science not only brings new ideas to the field of engineering, it also prevents us from being ignorant fools who think that lightning comes from “Zeus” or whatever throwing his fury at the earth instead of coming from the physical phenomenon of electrostatics.

“The second path involves becoming a professor, moving to a small town and telling everyone how they are awful and uncultured.” -(lol)
-This definitely describes a few of the professors I’ve had the unfortunate experience of coming into contact with.

Graduate School is the biggest scam ever!!!! So start Kindergarden at 5 (add 2 years of preschool), finish High School at 18, 4 years of Undergraduate, now 2 years of Graduate School….24 years of one’s life.
Either human beings are one stupid race, the US Education System is a long drawn out, not to mention expensive process or alot of people don’t like work. Probably a bit of all three. Everything I learned in Undergraduate School, could have been condensed into 1 intense year if you drop all those liberal art waste of everyone’s time courses….It’s B***S**t. Now Graduate School??????

Wow! I guess I wasted time getting all my time to get a PHD. You know you can’t get a job making more than 30,000 as just a pyschiatriast. It bumps up to $60,000 or more working at a private practive and you have to have a masters to hold a position as a pyschologist in any medical office. A PHD enables you to make $100,000 or atleast be taken serious in this degree. It is a complicated intellectual degree that isn’t just easy. Everyone and their mother might get a pysch degree but a PHD is a valuable degree and I don’t get why you talk like you are right off the street and hate white society when you went to college and kinda are WHITE!

I disagree with most of what you say because you write it from the perception of that region not the South. We do a lot of things different than your post.

Two thoughts on this. IMHO
1) Graduate school is hard but rewarding. You meet a very diverse set of professional people who are in the field working 60 hours a week. (I graduted with an MBA) This is the true value of graduate school. Anyone can read a book. It’s meeting people in banking, district managers, Accounting, engineers, any every other field you can think of. They bring experience to conversations and different insite.

2) A grad degree does not make you smarter than others. Sadly I know a few people with graduate degree’s that are complete idiots. It has to do with ther personality. If you are a hard worker, a leader, someone that rises to the top…. a grad degree may be useful. If you are someone that just barely stays in their current job, you may be wasting your time.

Also, this “white” thing….. I can’t tell you how many different culture I graduated with. White, Black, Arab, Korean, Japanese, etc. I really is pretty diverse which makes the learning experience that much richer in our interntional economy.

Even if its to read ‘English, History, Art History, Film, Gender Studies, Studies, Classics, Philosophy, Political Science, Literature, and the ultimate: Comp Lit,’ not every other person can get into an into an ivy league school. First, you have to be very intelligent, and then motivated. In any case, research has proven that people who go on to earn a masters degrees are usually more positive their future employment, more motivated and more likely to suceed than people who don’t.

All the people in those photos are women. I think women on the whole have to prove themselves not just smarter than “other white people” but smart, period. We’re raised to feel like we have no worth as human beings if we aren’t impossibly beautiful and/or impossibly smart, smart being measured by academic degrees. Not that you’re wrong. Just that the compulsion isn’t necessarily our fault, because a lot of us don’t know how to want anything else.

remember that ‘women’ is an all-appropriated word. Be specific. IF you mean white women, say white women. I say this because in your comment you state and generalize that women “have to prove themselves not just smarter than ‘other white people’ but smart, period.” As if ‘white people’ didnt include women as well…white women. As if ‘women’ shared a common experience. women of color have to prove themselves to their male counterparts and white women. get me?

This is hilarious! This is so me. After I graduated from college, I didn’t know what to do. A few years later, I decided that I didn’t like the job I ended up in, so I thought that being a teacher would be my calling (so I could “travel” during the summer months – lol!!). Here I am, years later, done with graduate school, no job, TONS of student debt, only to find out that the state is laying off thousands of teachers. And I’m thinking that I honestly would’ve been a lot happier if I just kept my old job (that other educated white people would have rolled their eyes at) and enjoyed the extra time and money that NOT going to graduate school would’ve given me.

Another funny thing about graduate school is that my Facebook friends love to post statuses about their classes, and when they do, they always have to mention that they are in grad school…like “almost done with my grad school class!” Seriously – is the “grad school” part necessary?! Or can’t wait for my “grad school graduation ceremony.” Ok, you’re in grad school…I think we get the point.

Some other suggestions for the list:
– white people love when they can successfully use public transportation systems, especially in foreign countries (and they love talking about public transportation systems)
– white people love expensive professional photographers for their kids’ pictures and baby announcements.
– rehabbing houses

This article is truer than many (white) people might care to admit. I live in a small college town in the West, and you wouldn’t believe how many white kids think getting a master’s degree is the end-all, be-all of existence. My sister has a master’s degree and she’s a functional idiot (no offense, sis, but you are) who is has less general intelligence than my brother who does not even have a bachelor’s degree.

Lander you really need to do a new one on white girls with psychology degrees. If I had a dime for all the wishy-washy white girls I knew who were psych majors, I could establish a welfare fund for all the unemployed graduates with worthless psych degrees.

To be fair, a graduate degree in Linguistics (which falls under the heading of English) can be very helpful in teaming up with M.D. researchers to help people with learning disabilities or other illnesses/disabilities affecting their language skills. Linguistics is, essentially, the science of language and can be just as helpful (and as occasionally useless) as the other sciences.

There is more truth in this post than most people would like to admit, but whatever drives people to grad school, the experience of being a grad student can prove deeply disappointing and disenchanting… as can quitting grad school and/or finishing it. For far too many people, it is a road to disappointment.

Anyone going to grad school in the arts, under the illusion that it will aid in a desire to pragmatically ‘climb the ladder’ in the ‘real world’, is sorely misguided. There then would seem to be a tragic mixing of question and answer; an obvious non-sequitor: ‘How can I make the buck?’ is not answered by ‘go to grad school (esp. in the arts)’, but by ‘go get that job that some neptotistic circumstance affords you and compromise all ethics to climb to the top of the ‘greedy pyramid’, violently subjugating peers and elders in the name of ‘progress’ or ‘development’, to ‘keep up with the Jones’s’ or to ‘be the envy of others’, or some other immature pursuit of this category which is the cause of all the problems on the planet. You see my point. If the arts grad wasn’t actually intending on being/living the insights he was reading, he shouldn’t have bothered. Money is best made through usery and extortion, if that’s for what purpose you think you were placed on this earth. If so, engage in business, or thievery, sectors like oil and gas, or child-trafficking… you know, where the money’s at!

I am a graduate student and happen to be white. After reading this, it seems like the author has a lot of anger and resentment that he/she is directing towards white people. I think it would be much more productive for this person to identify the source of this resentment and deal with it on their own instead of blaming others.

Three day weekends and sleeping in everyday? I wanna go to /that/ school. Man, when I was in grad school, I didn’t have time to sleep. Didn’t have time to get my work done, even. One day, I went, “Gee, I’m spending $32,000 a year to kill myself getting a useless degree in a field that no one cares about (except other graduate students in the same program) when I could be having a gall-darned life.” So I left. But–new form of white guilt, I guess–I still feel bad about leaving and constantly look for a new program to subject myself to, lest people should think I am not smart enough, or strong enough, to hack graduate school.
So, yeah. Seems pretty accurate to me, excepting the three-day weekend, thing.

White people, well all people, also enjoy http://www.NakedHipster.com. Mainly because the girls are hot and don’t have clothes on. Usually those two things go well together. You know, the hotness and the nakedness.
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3-day weekends? You mean 3-day work week. Only if you are hardworking of course. Clearly you have not been to grad school.

No one is here because they have some inner ego problems that can only be resolved by showing they are smarter. They are here because they don’t really feel like working yet and want to the party to continue. It’s like the longest vacation ever.

Understanding that most of the time furthering your education without real-world experience is hilarious, and we do have several educated idiots out there. But I myself am about to become an MFA student, the reason being that I actually would genuinely like to become a professor because I enjoy the environment. But without an MFA degree, many institutions will not take you seriously, this is not the fault of those seeking the jobs in my opinion. If I could be done with school and teach after graduation in May, I would, hell yes please! But because I have a career goal, my BFA serves as nothing other than to allow me to further my career pursuit.
In many ways, yes graduate programs and students are a waste of time, but to secure a stable future for my family and myself, these are the trails we must go through. It also helps when your good enough to get a full ride.

I’m going to be starting a PhD soon. However, I don’t really have any motivation to be a professor. My career goal is to get a research position somewhere, and not necessarily one in academia. I would have just applied to a Master’s program, but those don’t usually come with stipends. But, I’ll get more research experience in a PhD program anyways.

Now, if making boatloads of money is someone’s primary goal, they should go straight into the private sector after getting a Bachelor’s, and probably start a business if they have the skills. I’m happy to take a vow of poverty as long as I can do work I enjoy for the rest of my life.

Also, if I were to take my department’s ethnic statistics into account, this is something that indian and asian people like more. In my field, white people can actually get minority scholarships and fellowships.

This article is mostly right about the attitudes that go along with grad school. It IS all about ego validation–but what job isn’t at least partially so?

If you only “work” three days per week in grad school, you’re committing academic suicide. No wonder none of you can get jobs.

You’re right, officially I only taught and held office hours 2-3 days per week. But if you think that’s all of graduate school, you are fooling yourself.

When I took classes, I spent at least 15 hours a week reading, on top of my 6 office hours and 6 hours in the classroom. I spent about 9 hours a week in seminar I spent 5-10 or so hours helping faculty with research or helping them grade. I spent another couple hours attending “optional” (not really) presentations or workshops.

When I had midterms, finals, or papers to grade that added another 10-20 hours of work. I spent many, many, many hours each semester research and then writing papers. I spent unpaid summer hours working on research for publication.

For my exams, I spent 20 hours per week studying or so, for about eight weeks, on top of the time that it took to come with my reading list. For my dissertation, on the days I didn’t teach and hold office hours, I spend 8-10 hours each day writing it and another 4-6 hours each weekend day.

I did this with a child and salary of $17,000.00. You are stupid if you think grad school is easy or just a delay of the real world. It’s certainly not easy and though it might delay the “real” world, it’s no party–unless, of course, you want to be one of the hoarde who wasted their time and now is an unemployed holder of a terminal degree.

Because the author’s opinion is directed only towards white people, I feel he is generalizing or perhaps even being completely wrong in many cases. (But then again, this whole website is rooted in overgeneralizing). Is he/she implying that non-whites in graduate school are more useful to society? Or is he implying that graduate school is useless itself? And note, white people aren’t the only ones who enter college and realize that they are not as smart as they thought, (humbled college student of color here). The author has something against graduate school and seperately something against white people; but forcefully associating two hated things does not make for an argument. Ultimately the “white requirements for happiness”, i.e. wanting to help society, are shared by many other races. The description used for grad students as complaining about an unsupportive government, and sleeping in every day of the week can easily and more convincingly be applied to underrepresented minorities who breed more kids than they can handle and who abuse the welfare sytem and sit around all day watching reality TV. Look who’s generalizing now!

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LOL, I’m white, in English at grad school, and this post is hilarious!!! This just says what none of us really want to admit about the grad experience- – -hell, I’m doing this because it justifies my obnoxious love of pretentious words and I sit around and read every week of my three day weekend. Some people need to loosen up: grad school should be fun, and the shit people pull (while still whining) is downright funny. Kudous!

I love the way the author seems to feel that graduate school consists of sleeping late every day and having three days off a week. Don’t knock it til you try it, honey! If it is so easy, then why aren’t more people attending (and being accepted)? One doesn’t have a minute to oneself, even being accepted is difficult (ever take the GRE?), and the work is like nothing you have ever seen before!

Why aren’t more people attending? 1) Are you serious? SO MANY people are attending. 2) The main reason even more people aren’t attending id because he’s right. It doesn’t ake you more hireable, but ti does put you into quite a bit of debt. I left college after my bacheor’s degree and have been paying of debt, not incurring more since then. Grow up , get a job. It’s time to quit going to school ad actuall become an adult now.

I guess this is Lander getting back at graduate school because he wasn’t smart enough to get through. His graduate school is this shitty blog and a couple of lame books you can find stocked at the book warehouse for 70% off because no one wants to read this crap. The cynical hatred for everything progressive and intellectual on this blog reminds me of FOX news.

@Old Yella:
what are you talking about: this blog is hilarious, nothing cynical about it. The mere term ‘progressive’ describes it. If you can’t laugh about yourself, then go suck some herb tea out of a mason jar in Portland.

Americans think Irony something scripted on SNL, with intermittent laughtracks, so you get it…

The author seems to have a lot of time on their hands talking about those is grad school. Well, when writing posts about others and what they do it seems as though you are coveting their lifestyle. For someone who speaks of sleeping in and growing up it seems as though you should take your own advice and get a life. Who doesn’t like most of the things you listed. And as far as gifted children the term just doesn’t simply refer to intelligence verses non intelligence. Go back to school.

What about Interdisciplinary Studies? White people most of all love to take Interdisciplinary Studies, which we claim is a way of working between disciplinary boundaries that are all fake constructions anyways.

dont take it so seriously. like you haven’t made fun of other people before. i do think this is more for upper/ upper middle class, liberal white people though. But still, take a chill pill Mystic. what did you expect from a comedy blog?

Asians, international students, and other people who are actually smart go to real grad school, for engineering, economics, math, and the physical sciences. White people just stick to the humanities and lower forms of social science, so they can claim superiority without having their egos crushed by subjects that require abstract analytical thinking or any other form of intelligence. It’s the same thing they do in undergrad: remember when you (minority) majored in Econ, Physics, Math, Engineering, or some other rigorous discipline, and got a slightly lower gpa than those white kids (or priveleged people who thought they were white) who majored in English or Gender studies? Remember how you landed that six figure job after you graduated, while they were working with Teach for America? Yeah, that’s what happens when you study something that’s meaningful, as opposed to getting a bullshit degree with an inflated gpa.

Really? I’m a white guy and I went to grad school. Oh, I should mention that I went to grad school and got a PhD in and MD/PhD program. That was a few years ago, and I’ve since landed a job in the “big boy” six figures (read: closer to 500k than 100k). Plenty of my friends aren’t white and some of them graduated with PhDs in social sciences. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. You seem bitter to white people for some reason; is it because you didn’t land the job you wanted?

I really don’t like the way this website characterizes the white race. That’s why the world is like it is. I would think whoever wrote this should go back to grade school and learn the proper w a y to refference people into groups without being disrespectful or sounding dumb.

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I’m white and this is hilarious (and true, at least with the academic types). I have a Bachelors Art degree (next to useless, only good for getting a job as a bicycle mechanic or working at Starbucks…of course you don’t need to be white to be suckered into an art degree) I got over ten years ago and have been doing just fine with a career I could’ve had without the degree, but was thinking, hey, I’ve always wondered about that MFA I could’ve gotten. Thank you for this amazing, and very funny post…it has opened my eyes.

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